Category: 2. World

With more than 100 people dead, many of them children attending a Christian summer camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River, Friday’s extreme flash flooding that overwhelmed a sizeable chunk of central Texas will be recorded as one of the state’s worst ever natural disasters.

The brunt of the tragedy was felt in Kerr county, where at least 27 children and counsellors were killed after a deluge of water described by one witness as a “a pitch-black wall of death” swept through the all-girl Camp Mystic on the river’s south fork. About 750 young campers were celebrating the Fourth of July holiday.

map of central Texas showing Guadalupe River and location of Camp Mystic

Elsewhere in the county, authorities reported almost 50 more deaths, a number certain to rise in the coming days as the grim task of recovering bodies continues.

Alongside the human toll, torrential rain and catastrophic flooding caused near-unprecedented levels of destruction, affecting homes, businesses and vehicles. A preliminary estimate by the private weather service AccuWeather places the damage and economic loss at $18bn-$22bn (£13.2bn-£16.2bn).

“Everyone in the community is hurting,” said Dalton Rice, the city manager of Kerrville, the county seat, at a press conference on Sunday. “We are seeing bodies recovered all over, up and down.”

The first inkling that a disaster was imminent came in a bulletin issued by the Austin-San Antonio office of the National Weather Service at 1.18pm local time on Thursday, warning that “pockets of heavy rain are expected and may result in flooding of low-lying areas, rivers/creeks, and low water crossings”.

The message was amplified in a post to X little more than an hour later.

Shortly after midnight on Friday, the NWS was warning of “significant impacts” from torrential rain dousing counties north of San Antonio, which never let up through the early morning hours and swelled rivers and other waterways at an astonishing pace.

By 5.16am, the City of Kerrville’s police department was warning of a “life-threatening event” and urging anyone living along the Guadalupe River to immediately move to higher ground – warnings that some residents said came too late, or were not received at all.

speeded-up footage of river rising and sweeping through area

According to meteorologists, some parts of central Texas saw several months’ worth of rain in just a few hours, while gauges in the unincorporated Kerr county community of Hunt, where Camp Mystic is located, recorded 6.5in (16.5cm) of rain in only 180 minutes.

Some areas received up to 15in (38.1cm) through the day on Friday, more than a summer’s worth of rain in a single day, and reports of rainfall up to 8in (20.3cm) were widespread.

Map of rainfall in south-central Texas

The Guadalupe River rose by 26ft (8 metres) in 45 minutes, and 33ft (10 metres) in only two hours, surpassing the level of 31.5ft (9.6 metres) from a July 1987 flood less than 20 miles (32km) east of Kerrville in which 10 teenagers from a Christian summer camp drowned after their bus stalled in floodwater.

graphic showing sudden increase in water height

Search and rescue crews from local, state and federal agencies, using drones, boats and helicopters, were deployed at first light on Friday, as news footage began to convey the scale of the disaster.

At a briefing on Saturday, authorities said about 850 people had been rescued, with more than 400 first responders from almost two dozen agencies covering an area of over 60 miles (97 miles). The number of responders grew to above 1,000 by the end of the day.

footage showing brown floodwaters across San Angelo: roads, gardens and yards are submerged with cars stranded and water surrounding houses

The Texas national guard deployed a MQ-9 Reaper uncrewed aerial vehicle over remote spots, while personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) joined emergency teams from other states in the search for survivors.

Rice, the Kerrville city manager, criticised the operation of unauthorised drones operated by private citizens and the news media for interfering with the rescue effort, which he said was further hampered by difficult terrain and more heavy rain.

By Sunday morning, 48 hours after the water first started to rise, and after a full day of recovering and identifying bodies while searching for those still missing, it was clear that central Texas had experienced its worst flooding event – and one of its most costly natural disasters – in decades.

Footage of river rushing under bridge; damage can be seen to the bottom of it.

The state’s governor, Greg Abbott, appeared at a press conference the day before to insist that crews would continue to consider anyone unaccounted for as alive, and called a statewide day of prayer for Sunday.

“All we know is that prayer does work,” he said, signing a request for a federal emergency declaration that the president, Donald Trump, approved on Sunday, freeing up more money and resources for recovery efforts.

Camp Mystic

map showing layout of the camp beside the river, including the dormitories on higher and lower ground

The popular private Christian summer camp, which is set to celebrate its centenary in 2026, lost at least 27 campers and counsellors, it said in a post to its website. “Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy. We are praying for them constantly,” it said.

The camp’s longtime owner and director, Richard “Dick” Eastland, was among those lost.

The sprawling campsite on the bank of south fork features dormitories on lower ground that were completely overwhelmed by water. Post-flood photographs from inside one of the buildings show metal beds thrown around, as well as pink and purple sleeping bags and bedding, lunchboxes and mud-covered luggage that was abandoned as campers and staff evacuated in haste.

About 750 girls were attending the camp, which offers more than 30 activities during three month-long terms over the summer “to provide young girls with a wholesome Christian atmosphere in which they can develop outstanding personal qualities and self-esteem”.

By Monday night, 10 campers and one counsellor were still unaccounted for. Families with ties to Camp Mystic gathered in Dallas for a vigil at the George W Bush Presidential Center.

Recovery so far

Drier weather forecasts for the area from Tuesday and beyond, allied to falling river levels, offered hope that clean-up and recovery efforts can gather pace.

Some residents returned to their flood-ravaged properties on Monday to salvage what they could, while others found they had no homes to go back to, some taking refuge in a Red Cross centre in Kerrville.

Kathy Perkins told the Guardian that her trailer home was damaged by water, but some of her neighbours’ homes were swept away or moved around in the flood.

The White House announced that Trump would visit, probably on Friday, to look at the damage and announce more federal aid in terms of money and resources for Kerr county and neighbouring areas.

Another Hunt resident, Lesa Baird, 65, rode out the flood in a tree, then walked to her local Baptist church for help. “There’s no home to go to. It’s done,” she said.

The deliveries of Chinese surface-to-air missile batteries occurred after a de-facto truce was struck between Iran and Israel on 24 June, an Arab official familiar with the intelligence told MEE.

Another Arab official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive intelligence, said that the US’s Arab allies were aware of Tehran’s efforts to “back up and reinforce” its air defences and that the White House had been informed of Iran’s progress. 

The officials did not say how many surface-to-air missiles, or SAMs, Iran had received from China since the end of the fighting. However, one of the Arab officials said that Iran was paying for the SAMs with oil shipments.

China is the largest importer of Iranian oil, and the US Energy Information Administration suggested in a report in May that nearly 90 percent of Iran’s crude and condensate exports flow to Beijing.

For several years, China has imported record amounts of Iranian oil despite US sanctions, using countries such as Malaysia as a transshipment hub to mask the crude’s origin.

“The Iranians engage in creative ways of trading,” the second Arab official told MEE.

MNA/

Nearly 450,000 Afghans have returned from Iran since early June, according to the United Nations refugee agency, after Tehran imposed a July 6 deadline for undocumented migrants and refugees to leave the country.

The surge compounds Afghanistan’s existing challenges as the impoverished nation struggles to integrate waves of returnees from Pakistan and Iran since 2023, amid one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises after decades of conflict.

The UNHCR reports that more than 1.4 million people have “returned or been forced to return to Afghanistan” this year alone. Iran’s late May directive potentially affects four million undocumented Afghans among the approximately six million Afghan residents claimed by Tehran.

Border crossings increased dramatically from mid-June, with some days seeing approximately 40,000 people entering Afghanistan. Between June 1 and July 5, 449,218 Afghans returned from Iran, bringing the 2024 total to 906,326, according to an International Organization for Migration spokesman.

Many returnees report experiencing pressure from authorities, arrests, deportations, and financial losses due to hasty departures. The crisis response has been hampered by significant cuts in foreign aid, prompting calls for increased funding from the UN, international NGOs, and Taliban officials.

The UN has cautioned that this mass return could further destabilise Afghanistan, which already faces entrenched poverty, unemployment, and climate change effects. “Forcing or pressuring Afghans to return risks further instability in the region, and onward movement towards Europe,” the UNHCR said on Friday.

While Taliban officials advocate for a “dignified” return process, Iranian media frequently reports mass arrests of “illegal” Afghans. Iran’s deputy interior minister, Ali Akbar Pourjamshidian, acknowledged that while undocumented Afghans in the country were “respected neighbours and brothers in faith”, Iran’s “capacities also have limits”. He indicated the return process “will be implemented gradually”.

Many Afghans had migrated to Iran for employment, sending vital remittances to families in Afghanistan. Returnee Ahmad Mohammadi told the AFP news agency at a reception centre in Herat province, “If I can find a job here that covers our daily expenses, I’ll stay here. But if that’s not possible, we’ll be forced to go to Iran again, or Pakistan, or some other country.”

Getty Images

EPA

As search crews were continuing to pick through the wreckage from Friday’s deadly floods in Texas’s Hill Country, mothers on Monday were dropping their teenage children off at Trinity Baptist church in hard-hit Kerrville for camp.

For the past few days, the church had served as a meeting point for families coming to – hopefully – be reunited with children who had attended other camps in the area. One of those was Camp Mystic in Kerr county, which lost more than two dozen campers and counselors during Friday’s deluge. The death toll as of Monday had exceeded 100 across Texas.

And, though that grim number made them nervous and sensitive to the mourning around them, the mothers bringing their daughters to Trinity on Monday said they believed it was important to fight for a return to normalcy amid the devastation.

They also took comfort in the fact that the Trinity summer camp is on a lake and unlikely to experience anything like what had happened days earlier at Camp Mystic and other communities along the Guadalupe River.

One of the women at the church, 26-year-old Brooklyn Thomas, said that some of her core memories as a child had come from camp along the Guadalupe River.

“I’m sure they’ll take some more precautions,” Thomas remarked, contributing to an ongoing discussion about whether public safety alerts sent out ahead of Friday’s flooding reached everyone they needed to reach in time.

Thomas was accompanying her mother, Toni Way, to drop Thomas’s sister off at the camp. Way said their instinct to carry on with camp despite what had happened came from something “very deep rooted” within.

“These children’s parents went there when they were kids,” Thomas said. “Every year they send the next generation to camp.”

But scenes of unimaginable heartbreak had also unfolded in the very space where Way and Thomas described their battle to preserve tradition.

Cliff Brown, who had been coordinating the reunification effort at Trinity Baptist, said: “Some have found their children and gone home. Others haven’t.”

Brown said he found hope in how the community had reached out “incredibly” to the families of those who had been lost to offer condolences or whatever assistance they could.

A region unprepared for floods

Way, Thomas and Brown all acknowledged the political discussion surrounding the deadly flooding – about whether Trump administration budget cuts affecting the regional National Weather Service (NWS) office had left the area underprepared.

Government officials, in part, have maintained that warnings of flash flooding were issued in advance. But some residents reported not receiving them – something Texas’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, acknowledged while he appeared on Sunday on Fox News.

Kerr county had looked into installing sirens, river gauges and new communication tools on the Guadalupe River in 2017, the New York Times reported, but the plan was not taken up.

In any event, an initial NWS forecast before Friday’s disaster had called for only 3-6in of rain.

But the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, combined with other weather systems that stalled in the area, ended up dumping 12in of rain before dawn on Friday. That is estimated to have increased the discharge of the Guadalupe River from 10 cubic feet per second on Thursday to 111,000 cubic feet per second on Friday evening.

Meanwhile, communities along the Guadalupe River became overwhelmed when the river rose 26ft (8 meters) in 45 minutes on Friday morning.

A focal point of the destruction has been Camp Mystic. The nearly century-old, nondenominational Christian institution – which draws many participants from outside the surrounding area – reported the deaths of 27 summer campers and counselors. Among the dead were its director. Authorities later said 10 girls and a counselor were still missing.

It marked an unfathomably dark chapter in the history of a camp that “has always served as a near-flawless training ground for archetypal Texas women”, as the magazine Texas Monthly put it in a 2011 profile of the institution.

While Way was sympathetic to the families affected by the horrors at Camp Mystic, she said she had long ago resigned herself to the fact that flooding from the Guadalupe River has been a hazard throughout her life.

The US Geological Survey calculates that the Guadalupe has flooded notably in 1936, 1952, 1972, 1978, 1987, 1991 and 1997. In 1998, it recorded a flood that exceeded 500-year flood projections.

“There’s been so many floods it’s kind of not funny,” Way said.

Neither Way nor her daughter could imagine the Texas Hill Country summer camp tradition being altered no matter what changes Friday’s devastation may spur.

Brown, meanwhile, offered his perspective on how suddenly things devolved.

“No one had any idea the water would rise like it did,” Brown said. “It came up so quickly it caught people off-guard.”

At least 18 people are missing in Nepal

Published On: Tue, 08 Jul 2025

15:42:37 PKT

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Over two dozen people were missing after torrential rain in China’s Tibet region triggered a deluge in the Bhote Koshi River, washing away the “Friendship Bridge” that links China and Nepal, officials said on Tuesday.

Weather forecasting experts said the flood might have been the result of an overflowing glacial lake in Tibet since there had been no heavy rainfall in the immediate catchment area of the river in the preceding 24 hours.

At least 18 people are missing in Nepal while China’s official Xinhua news agency said 11 people were unaccounted for on the Chinese side of the mountainous border region.

In Nepal, the missing included six Chinese workers and three police personnel, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) said on X.

It added that eight electric cars were also washed away and a small hydroelectric plant was damaged in the flood.

Trade between Nepal and China was disrupted because of the bridge’s destruction, officials said.

The missing Chinese nationals were working at the Inland Container Depot being constructed with Chinese assistance about 80 km (50 miles) north of the capital Kathmandu, said Arjun Paudel, a senior administrative official of Rasuwa district.

“The river also swept away some containers with goods imported from China…There is a big loss (of property) and we are collecting details,” he told Reuters.

The Nepali army rescued 11 people and search and rescue operations were continuing, spokesperson Raja Ram Basnet said.

China has been increasing its investment in Nepal in recent years in domains including roads, power plants, and hospitals.

The Asian giant has been battered by heavy rain and flash floods over the last few days that have left a trail of destruction, and is bracing for a tropical storm this week.

Nepal’s weather forecasting department is working with Sentinel Asia – an international initiative that uses space-based technology to support disaster management in the Asia-Pacific region – to determine the cause of the flooding.

“We have made an Emergency Observation Request to the Sentinel Asia … for the satellite data to ascertain the possible causes of the flood and its impact,” it said.

In Pakistan, at least 79 people including 38 children have died in floods and rain-related incidents, including landslides and house collapses, since June 26, its National Disaster Management Authority said on Tuesday.

The NDMA issued fresh alerts for flash flooding and glacial lake outbursts in the northern and northwestern provinces of Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, citing “a significant rise in temperatures and…an upcoming weather system.”