Kingdom ravaged by rain, dust storms

January 29, 2013

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Jeddah, Jan 29: Torrential rains and dust storms have swept the Kingdom, resulting in evacuations from wadis and other threatened areas of Tabuk and the closure of Tabuk schools on Monday.

Weather forecasters are saying that the bad weather could stay around for the next couple of days.

Clearly, the hardest hit area was Tabuk where schools were also closed for the week out of concern for the safety of children and teachers.

“Due to the heavy rain in the region, we decided to suspend school classes for the safety of our students,” said Mohammad bin Abullah Al-Lhedan, general director of education in Tabuk.

At least, one death has been attributed to the weather. A baby boy died in Wadi Rawafa when he fell from the hands of his mother after the family’s car was trapped in floodwaters. Civil Defense rescued the family and recovered the child’s body, according to Prince Fahd bin Sultan, governor of Tabuk.

Some roads leading into flooded valleys in the region have been closed and residents of the southern district of Tabuk evacuated in anticipation of heavy rains. Twenty-five cars and three school buses were saved by Civil Defense, the buses as they were about to be swept away to the Salw Valley. Numerous agricultural roads connecting villages in the region were also flooded.

Col. Mamdouh Al-Anazi, spokesman for Civil Defense, said his forces had rescued 23 people, including women and children in Damj district, using helicopters on Sunday.

Al-Anazi said the civil defense had called for evacuation of the southern districts of Abu Sabaa, Kuraim and Abu Dumaik. “We have received reports of some 273 people and cars trapped in floods,” he said. The worst hit districts were Abu Sabaa, Kuraim, Raheel, Rwuaieyat and Waha. Civil Defense forces and Red Crescent officers have been camping in these areas to help victims.

At the port of Dhuba, all cruises were stopped and Naval Guards there issued warnings to fishermen and vacationers not to venture out into the sea.

Mahmoud Al-Huwaiti from Dhuba said the situation in the city has become worse as a result of the heavy rains. He urged government agencies to put more effort into containing the situation, which is on the verge of catastrophe. The Sharma Dam has collapsed and many roads have become unusable, he added.

Although Jeddah managed to avoid rainstorms yesterday, the city was swept by brisk winds and enveloped in a dust cloud that cut visibility to just a few hundred meters in some sections of the city. Rain is expected to fall on Jeddah today.

According to Hussain Al-Qahtani, spokesman for PME, the expected rains will be "at the medium level for Jeddah.”

The weather is a result of a cold air mass to the north that began exerting its influence in the north and west of the Kingdom yesterday, according to PME. Winds are expected to shift to northeasterly, which could result in temperatures falling some 5 to 10 degrees Celsius. In the northern areas of the Kingdom, temperatures could plummet to 0 degree Celsius.

PME is forecasting continued dusty weather in Makkah and Madinah for today.

In the event that power outages occur, the Saudi Electric Company warned customers to use caution and ensure the safety of all electrical devices once power is restored.

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News Network
November 13,2024

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Beirut: The Israeli army on Tuesday continued to launch attacks against civilians in Lebanon, targeting them in several areas without prior evacuation warnings.

However, 13 airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs in the space of only three hours were preceded by evacuation warnings.

The attacks caused no injuries but resulted in widespread destruction of residential buildings and commercial, medical and educational centers.

The airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Bekaa region, reaching Akkar in Lebanon’s far north, erased any hope of a near-term ceasefire settlement.

The strikes were accompanied by an announcement on Israel’s Channel 14 that “the Israeli army has expanded its operations in southern Lebanon to areas it had not reached since the beginning of the ground operation.”

About 50 days have passed since Israel intensified its hostile operations in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. The death toll from these confrontations and attacks has passed 3,200, with more than 14,000 wounded.

For the first time, an airstrike targeted a mountainous area between Baalchmay and Aabadiyeh on the road leading to Aley, destroying a building housing displaced people.

The mayor of Baalchmay, Adham Al-Danaf, confirmed that “the airstrike targeted a residential building in the Dhour Aabadiyeh area.”

The initial toll from the Ministry of Health showed “five people killed and two injured.”

The raids that targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs for the first time in the morning, unlike nightly raids before, caused huge destruction. Those who evacuated their homes after Israeli warnings, used their phones to record the collapse of empty buildings in Sfeir, Haret Hreik, Bir Al-Abed, Mrayjeh, Laylaki and Hadath.

Israeli warplanes also targeted Tyre, where a strike on a building killed three people and injured many others, while a raid on Tefahta killed a man identified as Kifah Khalil and his family.

Attacks were widespread, with Yater and Zebqine subject to artillery shelling, a civilian being killed in Hermel, and further attacks on Bouday and an area between the towns of Srifa and Arsoun.

A raid on the town of Siddiqin killed two people and injured several others, while an attack on the Mechref farm led to one fatality and multiple injuries.

The search for those missing after an Israeli raid on the town of Ain Yaacoub in Akkar, in the northernmost part of Lebanon, continued until dawn.

During the operation, 14 bodies were retrieved, identified as those of residents displaced from the town of Arabsalim in the Iqlim Al-Tuffah area of the south, along with members of a Syrian family, a mother and three of her children. Additionally, there were 10 people in critical condition.

The targeted residence belongs to a Lebanese citizen, Hussein Hashim, who is reported to be a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

An airstrike on the town of Saksakiyeh in the Sidon region on Monday night resulted in yet another tragedy.

It appeared that the intended target was the Shoumer family, who just days before lost Hussein Amin Shoumer and his two sisters in a drone strike near Al-Awali River.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued additional evacuation warnings for towns in the southern region along the Litani River, which, according to estimates from the mayors, are currently 90 percent uninhabited.

In the meantime, Hezbollah announced its continued efforts to “combat the intrusions of Israeli forces and to strike military installations and towns in the north.”

Hezbollah said in a statement that it confronted “an Israeli Hermes 450 drone in the airspace of Nabatieh and forced it to leave Lebanese airspace.”

The party also announced that it targeted “Kfar Blum settlement with a rocket salvo.”

On the Israeli side, air raid sirens sounded in areas of Upper and Western Galilee and in the town of Kiryat Shmona and its surroundings.

The Israeli army confirmed that “a drone exploded in Nesher, east of Haifa, without activating the air raid sirens,” and that “a drone launched from Lebanon crashed into a school in Gesher HaZiv, north of Nahariya.”

Israel’s Channel 13 reported the Israeli military’s assessment regarding Hezbollah’s military strength, claiming that the group currently possesses approximately 100 precision missiles, thousands of artillery shells, and hundreds of rockets. Additionally, it was highlighted that “there are around 200 Lebanese towns that remain unvisited.”

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News Network
November 4,2024

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Hundreds of Israeli settlers conducted a brutal attack in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

The settlers set fire to numerous homes and vehicles of Palestinians and then moved to the main road connecting Ramallah to other cities, targeting Palestinian cars passing by.

They stormed the city of al-Bireh, near Ramallah, and burned Palestinian property and vehicles.

A woman sustained injuries after the settlers hurled stones at her vehicle, according to Palestinian news outlets.

Tension has been running high across the West Bank because of Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 43,341 people, mostly women and children, since last year’s October.

The Monday settler attack came as the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas warned of Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank and drive Palestinians out.

“We warn of the grave danger posed by the plans led by the extremist occupation regime and illegal settler groups to displace the residents of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank,” Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi said.

Israel's far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the full annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip last week.

Smotrich asserted that Israel should unequivocally declare there would be no Palestinian state.

He repeated his proposal of expanding Israeli settlements within the West Bank and other occupied territories.

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News Network
November 12,2024

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The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says its fighters have killed at least 20 Israeli soldiers in northern parts of the besieged Gaza Strip in just two days, in retaliation for the occupying regime’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory.

In a statement on Monday evening, Hamas said that fighters of its military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, “killed at least five occupation soldiers” in northern parts of the coastal territory earlier in the day.

It added that Hamas fighters also killed 15 Israeli soldiers in the war-ravaged region on Sunday.

The resistance movement’s “qualitative operation … confirms once again the failure of the criminal Zionist entity to suppress and eradicate the Palestinian resistance, which continues to direct qualitative strikes against its terrorist soldiers,” Hamas further said on its Telegram channel.

Palestinians have increased their resistance operations in the face of intensified Israeli aggression in northern Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 over the past weeks.

“Our valiant resistance is waging a war of attrition with the criminal enemy, inflicting daily losses on its soldiers and vehicles, and all of [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s bets and dreams of achieving any of his goals are failing,” the Gaza-based resistance movement added.

Hamas also vowed that Israel’s ongoing crimes and aggression against Gaza would be met with increased resistance and painful strikes, which will continue until the aggression against Palestinians ends and the regime fully withdraws from the blockaded territory.

As the war in Gaza enters its 14th month, the Health Ministry reports that Israeli attacks have killed at least 43,603 Palestinians and wounded 102,929 others.

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