Death toll rises in Turkey's floods
Pastor Dale Morgan
Death toll rises in Turkey's floods*
ANKARA, Oct 29 (AFP) Oct 29, 2006
Many more people, among them a children, were killed in floods in
Turkey's impoverished mainly Kurdish southeast, raising the death toll,
Anatolia news agency reported Sunday.
In the worst-hit province of Sanliurfa, a 19-year-old man drowned
overnight as floods, caused by torrential rains since Friday, burst into
the basement-floor flat of a residential building in the town of
Ceylanpinar on the Syrian border.
A second victim, whose details were not immediately known, perished in
the nearby village of Yukari Karatas as the waters submerged a car
carrying five other people, Anatolia reported.
Three passengers were rescued and another two went missing.
Wary that they might have been swept into streams flowing down to Syria,
the authorities have requested help from Syrian officials and put
ambulances on alert at the border crossing point, district governor
Yalcin Yilmaz told Anatolia.
The floods damaged many homes, shops, roads and bridges across
Sanliurfa, and dozens of livestock perished.
Officials said vast patches of cotton fields, a major source of
livelihood in the region, were also innundated.
Electricity and telephone services were cut in several villages.
In Van province to the east, a five-year-old girl was killed when the
roof of a mud house collapsed under the heavy rain, Anatolia said.
Many buildings in the neighboring provinces of Siirt and Bitlis were
also flooded.