Wednesday, November 25, 2009 JEDDAH: Flooding killed at least 11 people in Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port city of Jeddah on Wednesday after a heavy downpour, with more deaths feared, a civil defence official said. The 11 victims were believed to have drowned, the official said, requesting anonymity. The storm struck the western Saudi city in the morning, flooding streets. In one part of Jeddah, a bus could be seen submerged under several metres (yards) of water in an underpass. A witness told a French news agency by telephone he had seen several bodies beside another bus that overturned in the storm. Major roads remained gridlocked by traffic late on Wednesday after the rain stopped and floodwaters receded, witnesses said. The storm also stranded hundreds of Muslim pilgrims in buses headed from Jeddah to Makkah for the first full day of the annual hajj. Traffic accidents were reported on the 80-kilometre (50-mile) stretch from Jeddah to Islam's holiest city, where some 2.5 million Muslim pilgrims are gathered for the hajj.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
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