Wednesday, September 09, 2009 ANKARA: Nine people were killed and two were missing on Tuesday as torrential rain triggered floods in north-western Turkey, media reports and officials said. A family of five were swept away from a farm near the town of Saray, Tekirdag province, when heavy rain caused a river to burst its banks overnight and inundate a large area, causing significant material damage, the town's mayor Nazmi Coban told a news agency. The bodies of the mother and her three daughters, aged six, eight and 12, were found several kilometres away from the farm. Rescue teams were still looking for the father. Rescuers also discovered the bodies of an elderly couple among the wreckage of a nearby house that was swept away by the flooding, Coban told Anatolia. In Silivri, a seaside suburb of Turkey's biggest city Istanbul, one person died of a heart attack when flood waters gushed into his home, governor Muammer Gulen told the Anatolia news agency. Rescuers were searching for a two-year-old girl washed away by the flood in a car from which her mother and sister managed to get out safely, he added. Dozens of people were evacuated from their homes by military helicopters and small boats
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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