Floods Grip Kazakhstan and Russia as Tributaries of Ob Rise 

A drone view shows a flooded residential area in Petropavl, Kazakhstan April 13, 2024. (Reuters)
A drone view shows a flooded residential area in Petropavl, Kazakhstan April 13, 2024. (Reuters)
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Floods Grip Kazakhstan and Russia as Tributaries of Ob Rise 

A drone view shows a flooded residential area in Petropavl, Kazakhstan April 13, 2024. (Reuters)
A drone view shows a flooded residential area in Petropavl, Kazakhstan April 13, 2024. (Reuters)

Swathes of northern Kazakhstan and Russia's Urals region were flooded on Monday as melt waters swelled the tributaries of the world's seventh longest river system, forcing more than 125,000 people to flee their homes.

Russia's southern Ural region and northern Kazakhstan have been grappling with the worst flooding in living memory after very large snow falls melted swiftly amid heavy rain over land already waterlogged before winter.

That has swelled the tributaries of the Ob, which rises in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia and empties into the Arctic Ocean, beyond bursting point, leaving some cities in Russia and Kazakhstan under water.

Several districts of the northern Kazakh city of Petropavlovsk were completely flooded, said a Reuters journalist in the city, which sits on the Ishim River, a tributary of the Irtysh, the chief tributary of the Ob.

Almost 1,000 houses have been flooded in the North Kazakhstan region of which Petropavlovsk is the center, and over 5,000 people have been evacuated, local officials said. There have been interruptions in power and water supply in the city.

People were queuing up in front of water trucks moving from one neighborhood to another in the city. The main reservoir supplying the city with drinkable water has been flooded.

Just a few hundred kilometers over the border, Russia's Kurgan, a region of 800,000 people at the confluence of the Ural mountains and Siberia, was grappling with flooding and rising water levels in the Tobol River, another tributary of the Irtysh.

Water levels rose to 6.31 meters (over 20 ft) in the main city, Kurgan. Governor Vadim Shumkov said there was almost a "sea" of water approaching.

"The city of Kurgan itself will be next," Shumkov said. "The flow of the Tobol is accelerating. The water level in it is constantly rising."

"Fellow countrymen, leave the flooded areas immediately."

Shumkov warned that flooding would begin shortly on the right bank of the Tobol, which slices the region south to north, and the low part of its left bank.

Floods were also inundating homes in the Tomsk region in the southwestern part of Siberia, regional officials said on Telegram.

Almost 140 houses near the city of Tomsk, which is the regional administrative center, were under water on Monday and 84 people were evacuated.

The Ob-Irtysh river system is the world's seventh largest, after the Yellow River, the Yenisei, the Mississippi, the Yangtze, the Amazon and the Nile.



At Least 28 are Hurt as Driver Plows into Demonstration in Germany

German police conduct random checks at border with Austria, soon to be introduced at all land frontiers in Kiefersfelden, Germany, September 10, 2024. REUTERS/Ayhan Uyanik
German police conduct random checks at border with Austria, soon to be introduced at all land frontiers in Kiefersfelden, Germany, September 10, 2024. REUTERS/Ayhan Uyanik
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At Least 28 are Hurt as Driver Plows into Demonstration in Germany

German police conduct random checks at border with Austria, soon to be introduced at all land frontiers in Kiefersfelden, Germany, September 10, 2024. REUTERS/Ayhan Uyanik
German police conduct random checks at border with Austria, soon to be introduced at all land frontiers in Kiefersfelden, Germany, September 10, 2024. REUTERS/Ayhan Uyanik

A driver drove a car into a union demonstration in central Munich on Thursday, injuring at least 28 people including children, authorities said. Officials said it was believed to be an attack.

The suspect, an Afghan asylum-seeker, was arrested. The incident follows a series of attacks involving immigrants in recent months that have pushed migration to the forefront of the campaign for Germany’s Feb. 23 election.

Participants in a demonstration by the service workers’ union ver.di were walking along a street at about 10:30 a.m. when the car overtook a police vehicle following the gathering, accelerated and plowed into the back of the group, police said, The AP reported.

Officers arrested the suspect after firing a shot at the car, deputy police chief Christian Huber said. He added that at least 28 people were believed to be injured, some of them seriously. A damaged Mini was seen at the scene, along with debris including shoes.

The suspect was a 24-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker, Huber said. Bavaria’s state interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said he was known to authorities in connection with theft and drug offenses, but didn't give further details. The state’s justice minister, Georg Eisenreich, said a prosecutors’ department that investigates extremism and terror was looking into the case.

“It is simply terrible,” Bavarian governor Markus Söder told reporters at the scene. “We feel with the victims, we are praying for the victims — we hope very much that they all make it.”

“It is suspected to be an attack — a lot points to that," Söder added.

Mayor Dieter Reiter said he was “deeply shocked” by the incident. He said that children were among those injured.

The Munich incident comes three weeks after a two-year-old boy and a man were killed in a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, also in Bavaria. An Afghan whose asylum application was rejected was the suspect in that attack, which propelled migration to the center of the German election campaign.

The Aschaffenburg attack followed knife attacks in Mannheim and in Solingen last year in which the suspects were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria, respectively — in the latter case, also a rejected asylum-seeker who was supposed to have left the country.

In the December Christmas market car ramming in Magdeburg, the suspect was a Saudi doctor who previously had come to various regional authorities’ attention.

Germany's main opposition conservative bloc, in which Söder is a prominent figure, has demanded a tougher approach to irregular migration, calling for many more people to be turned back at the country's borders and for an increase in deportations. Curbing migration is also a core issue for the far-right Alternative for Germany, which polls put in second place behind the conservatives.

“This is more evidence that we can't go from attack to attack and show dismay, thank police for their deployment," Söder said. “We actually have to change something. This is not the first such act; so, we feel with the people today, but at the same time we are determined that something must change in Germany, and quickly.”

Center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government said it already has done a lot to reduce irregular migration, and that the opposition's plans are incompatible with German and European Union law.

Scholz described the latest incident as “really terrible.”

“Anyone who commits crimes in Germany will not just be punished severely and have to go to prison, but must expect that he cannot continue his stay in Germany — and that also goes for countries that it is very difficult to send people back to,” he said.

The chancellor noted that his government deported convicted criminals to Afghanistan on a flight in August and is working to do so again — “and not just once, but continually.”

The Bavarian capital will see heavy security in the coming days because the three-day Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of international foreign and security policy officials, opens on Friday.

Herrmann said authorities do not believe the car ramming was connected to the conference, but they still need to determine the motive.