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Heavy rains hamper recovery as death toll from floods in Asia exceeds 1,750
Rescue teams and volunteers have been struggling to assist millions of people affected by floods and landslides in parts of Asia, as the official death toll from the ongoing climate-fuelled disaster has climbed to more than 1,750 people in the worst-affected countries of Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
In Indonesia, at least 908 people were confirmed dead and 410 were still missing, according to the latest data on Saturday from the island of Sumatra, where more than 800,000 people have also been displaced.
In Sri Lanka, the government has confirmed 607 deaths, with another 214 people missing and feared dead, in what President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has called the country’s most challenging natural disaster.
The floods also caused at least 276 deaths in Thailand, while two people were killed in Malaysia and two people died in Vietnam after heavy rains triggered more than a dozen landslides, according to state media.
On Indonesia’s Sumatra, many survivors were still struggling to recover from the flash floods and landslides that hit last week as Indonesia’s meteorological agency warned Aceh could see “very heavy rain” through Saturday, with North and West Sumatra also at risk.
Aceh Governor Muzakir Manaf said response teams were still searching for bodies in “waist-deep” mud.
However, starvation was one of the gravest threats now hanging over remote and inaccessible villages, he said.
“Many people need basic necessities. Many areas remain untouched in the remote areas of Aceh,” he told reporters.
“People are not dying from the flood, but from starvation. That’s how it is.”
Entire villages had been washed away in the rainforest-cloaked Aceh Tamiang region, Muzakir said.
“The Aceh Tamiang region is completely destroyed from the top to the bottom, down to the roads and down to the sea.
“Many villages and sub-districts are now just names,” he said.
In Sri Lanka, where more than two million people – nearly 10 percent of the population- have been affected, officials warned on Friday of continuing heavy rains causing new landslide risks.
Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said more than 71,000 homes were damaged, including nearly 5,000 that were destroyed by last week’s floods and landslides.
The DMC said on Friday that more rain was expected in many parts of the country, including the worst-affected central region, triggering fears of more landslides, hampering cleanup operations.
Last week’s flood came as two typhoons and a cyclone swept through the region at the same time, causing heavy rains, which experts told Aljazeera are becoming more likely due to climate change.
Illegal logging, often linked to the global demand for palm oil, also contributed to the severity of the disaster in Sumatra, where photographs of the aftermath showed many tree logs washed downstream. Indonesia is among the countries with the largest annual forest loss due to mining, plantations and fires, and has seen the clearance of large tracts of its lush rainforest in recent decades.
Indonesia’s Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni said on Friday that his office was revoking the logging licences of 20 companies, covering an area of 750,000 hectares (1.8m acres), including in flood-affected areas in Sumatra, Indonesia’s Antara news agency reported.
Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq also “immediately” halted the activities of palm oil, mining, and power plant companies operating upstream of the disaster-hit areas in northern Sumatra on Saturday, according to Antara.
The Batang Toru and Garoga watersheds are strategic areas with ecological and social functions that must not be compromised,” Hanif said.
Febi Dwirahmadi, Indonesian programme coordinator for the Centre for Environment and Population Health at Griffith University in Australia, told Al Jazeera that rainforest cover “acts like a sponge” absorbing water during heavy rainfall.
Following deforestation, which is also contributing to making climate change worse, there is nothing to slow down the heavy rainfall as it enters waterways, Dwirahmadi said.
[Aljazeera]
The head of Turkiye’s football refereeing body and four other officials have been placed in pretrial detention by a court as part of a corruption investigation, the state news agency Anadolu reports.
Ferhat Gundogdu, head of the Central Referees Committee, and six others appeared before a judge over allegations of manipulation of the referee administration process, Anadolu said on Saturday.
They appeared on Friday before a judge at Istanbul’s Caglayan courthouse on several charges, including forgery of official documents, breach of trust and illegal acquisition of personal data, the report said.
The judge remanded five people in custody and granted the other two conditional release, Anadolu said.
It was the latest scandal to shake football in Turkiye, coming exactly a year after the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) suspended 149 referees on charges of illegal betting.
On Thursday night, police from the illegal betting and sports crime unit also detained Yasin Kol, a referee from Turkiye’s top-flight Super Lig, as well as an assistant referee, media reports said.
Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said prosecutors are examining claims about “interference in the processes of referee classification, assignments, scoring and appointments as well as the exams on rules”.
During raids on Tuesday, police searched the VAR room at TFF’s headquarters in Istanbul. Observers said the investigation was likely linked to last year’s betting scandal and would have implications for the federation.
“It does seem to be a continuation of 2025, and it looks like it will continue further,” sports journalist Ayhan Sensoy told the AFP news agency.
Sensoy, who wrote a 2024 book on the issue called The Gambling Pit, said it was unlikely that federation bosses “have any chance of staying in office”.
So far, the TFF has not directly addressed the arrests as its top officials are due to fly home on Saturday after attending Friday night’s Belgium-Turkiye UEFA Nations League clash in Liege, which Turkiye lost 3-0.
[Aljazeera]
A car has crashed into a crowd of rugby league supporters in the eastern Australian city of Newcastle, injuring 10 people, including three children.
New South Wales police said on Saturday that two of the injured – a five-year-old girl and a 67-year-old man – were in a critical condition and the other eight were in stable condition in hospital.
Police said they had arrested the 18-year-old man driving the vehicle and were investigating what happened. They said the crash was not believed to be related to “terrorism”.
The crowd had gathered to farewell the local rugby league side, the Newcastle Knights, ahead of their grand final against the Sydney Roosters on Sunday.
Newcastle Lord Mayor Gavin Morris said the driver, a rugby league fan, had lost control of his vehicle and had been taken into custody.
“He was revving the car, he was excited, he was a supporter, he was there for the joy of the moment,” Morris told the national broadcaster ABC.
“Somehow he lost control of the car … and he’s gone into the crowd,” he added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “My thoughts are with everyone injured or involved in the horrible incident this morning in Newcastle.”
“Rugby league brings people together, and this should have been a weekend of excitement and pride for Newcastle fans,” he wrote in a social media post.
[Aljazeera]
Polls have opened in Latvia for an election taking place against the backdrop of perceived security threats from Russia and a nationwide cost-of-living squeeze.
Saturday’s vote is the first electoral test for Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs after coming to power in May this year when his predecessor resigned due to a backlash from stray drone incursions from Ukraine.
Kulbergs, whose right-wing United List party is currently polling at about 20 percent, is expected to hold onto his position, but the decline of two allies in his current coalition means he is set for a complicated negotiation over the makeup of any future government.
Polls opened at 05:00 GMT and will close at 17:00 GMT. The results are not expected to change Latvia’s pro-European and pro-Ukrainian course.
About 1.5 million people are eligible to vote in the country’s 11th parliamentary election since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Latvian politics are highly fragmented, with parties rarely seeing above 20 percent vote share and coalitions being the norm.
This year, 14 electoral lists are contesting the election, but polls indicate only seven are likely to enter parliament, with the rest expected to fail to meet the minimum 5 percent vote threshold.
Rising living costs, low wages, strains on the healthcare system and long-term population decline have all featured prominently in campaign debates.
Most parties in Latvia are pro-Ukraine; however, the populist Sovereign Power party – which says it wants Ukraine to win but argues money spent supporting Kyiv would be better spent at home – looks likely to become the country’s second-biggest party, with more than 9 percent of the vote. Most other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with Sovereign Power.
Latvia First, a pro-Ukraine and populist nationalist party currently polling at about 9 percent, could be a potential coalition partner for PM Kulbergs.
The Progressives, a pro-European social democratic party, are polling at 6 percent.
Ethnic Russians make up roughly one in four Latvian citizens, but their vote, which has traditionally been cast along identity-based lines, looks set to be made according to economic and social issues.
Latvia is the poorest of the Baltic states, and it has sharply increased its defence spending since Russia invaded Ukraine, now allocating nearly 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to defence.
[Aljazeera]
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