TEHRAN (FNA) – Iran on Friday raised the death toll from landslides and flash floods across the country to at least 53 people, adding those killed in a landslide in Tehran’s capital the day before, state television reported.
More than 30 other people died in two villages, northwest and northeast of Tehran, after the monsoon dumped heavy rains that triggered landslides, according to the report. Nearly two dozen people died in eight other provinces and 21 of Iran’s 31 provinces were affected by heavy rains.
The death toll was feared to rise further, as at least 16 other people remain missing and more bodies were found after the rains ended. The report says the army worker corps joined the rescue efforts and helped move thousands of other people from remote spaces to safer locations.
Last Saturday, flash floods in Iran’s southern Iran’s drought-stricken Province killed at least 22 other people and affected a dozen villages in the province.
This week’s typhoon is the deadliest of the rain-related incidents in Iran in the past decade. In 2019, a flash flood killed at least 21 other people in the southern city of Shiraz, and two years earlier, a typhoon killed another 48 people in northwestern Iran.
However, landslides in northern Iran in 2001 and Tehran in 1987 killed 500 and 300 people, respectively.
Before Thursday’s mudslide, the government had warned citizens of Tehran’s mountainous regions about heavy rains and imaginable flooding. Heavier rains were expected in the coming days.
Authorities have blamed the higher number of deaths on good protective measures through other people venturing into storms, while critics cite mismanagement of construction projects as well as expired warnings as other causes.
Supporting The Times of Israel is not a transaction for an online service, like subscribing to Netflix. The ToI network is for other people like you who care about a common good: making sure that Israel’s balanced and guilty policy remains to be held loose from tax to millions of other people around the world.
Of course, we will remove all classified ads from your page and unblock access to wonderful content from the network. But your help gives you something deeper than that: the pride of joining something that really matters.
That’s why we introduced The Times of Israel ten years ago, to provide discerning readers like you with a detailed policy of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other media outlets, we have not established a paywall. But because the journalism we do is expensive, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become vital to help our paintings join the Times of Israel community.
For just $6 a month, you can help our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel WITHOUT ADVERTISING, as well as access exclusive content only for members of the Times of Israel community.
Thank you, David Horovitz, founding editor of The Times of Israel.