Flash floods have killed at least five people, including four children, after heavy rain swept across northern and eastern Syria, the country's Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management said in a statement on Thursday.
Source: Al Jazeera
The four children drowned in bodies of water in Raqqa and Deir Az Zor governorates, the ministry said. A man also died when floodwater caught his car near al-Salmani Bridge in the western Raqqa countryside. No names of the children have been released.
Five other people, including two children, remain missing, and emergency teams rescued 15 civilians whose vehicles were trapped by floodwaters. The ministry said it evacuated approximately 375 families from three camps on the rural outskirts of Raqqa.
Flooding damaged infrastructure and disrupted several bridges in Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir Az Zor, Hasakah and Homs, according to the ministry. The state news agency SANA reported that al-Salmani Bridge, west of Tabqa, collapsed in the flooding, closing the road connecting Raqqa and Aleppo.
Source: SANA via Al Jazeera reporting
Second day of flooding, and not the first this year
Thursday was the second day on which the ministry recorded responses to flooding across the country, and it continues to issue situation updates on its X account as searches for the missing go on.
Syria has faced flooding before this year. UNICEF reported in June that 17,000 people had been adversely affected by flooding so far in the year, that 700 families had been displaced, including around 2,000 children, and that 49 water treatment plants in Deir Az Zor and Raqqa governorates had gone out of service.
Search teams are still looking for the five missing people, and the ministry is issuing rolling situation updates. The collapse of al-Salmani Bridge has cut the Raqqa–Aleppo road, so movement between the two cities will depend on alternate routes until repairs are made.