Muscat has long been renowned as one of the Middle East's prettiest, with a gorgeous mountain backdrop, a smattering of hilltop castles overlooking a sparkling sea, and a proud leader who rigorously tends to his capital city.
But on Thursday, Muscat came unglued. Cyclone Gonu romped through the tidy Omani capital before heading north across the Gulf of Oman and hitting Iran.
The postcard-perfect mountains that are the city's pride became its pain. Torrential rains poured onto the bone-dry peaks and then flowed into canyons and dry riverbeds that channeled the raging water directly into the city.
PHOTO: AFP
Bridges collapsed. Buses were piled in the wadis, the normally dry riverbeds that course through the city.
Muscat's lush palm and eucalyptus groves were blown over along with telephone and power lines. Even the normally sparkling blue sea, just off the crescent-shaped Muttrah Corniche, perhaps the Arab world's prettiest, looked like foamy chocolate milk.
Cyclone Gonu left the coast of Oman and swept into a major oil shipping route toward Iran yesterday, after killing at least 32 people.
The Omani official news agency said winds from Gonu, now downgraded to a Category One hurricane, were moderate and sea waves were about 2m high.
In Muscat, residents spoke of a night of horror as turgid floodwaters ripped into their homes, carried off refrigerators and cars, and left their streets gouged by sinkholes and caked in shoals of mud.
Nidhal al-Masharafi, 31, hunkered all night on his rooftop with his wife and six children, with just the cellphone he gripped in his hand.
"The water broke through the walls. It came inside the house. It swept everything out," al-Mashrafi said, limping as he wandered the bank of a flooded wadi.
A kilometer from his home, al-Mashrafi found his Subaru Outback, lying atop a taxi in the rapids of a new roaring river that slashed through his neighborhood.
From his rooftop perch, he said he saw floodwaters sweep 16 cars past, including a Ford Explorer which bobbed by with its headlights on.
"I called the police because I thought someone was still inside," he said.
The Explorer could be seen on Thursday resting upside down, half submerged.
Residents of the hard-hit neighborhood of al-Ghubra wandered along the banks of the temporary river, searching for their cars.
"I woke up today and my car was gone. I can't find it anywhere," said Humaid al-Harthi, 25.
A few drivers desperate or foolhardy enough to drive across found themselves in rushing water up to their cars' grilles. The crossing was the only entrance to an otherwise cut-off beachfront neighborhood.
Al-Harthi and other residents said it would take at least a year to restore the upper-class district.
Few doubt the city will regain its old polish.
Muscat is Oman's showcase capital -- the Geneva of the Middle East -- where the fastidious Sultan Qaboos has decreed that highways be swept daily and laws require homeowners to cover air conditioners with decorative boxes and wash their cars every two weeks.
Those homeowners were hauling soaked bedding and carpets from their concrete villas and piling it in the streets for the bulldozers busy clearing mud and rocks.
The massive cleanup was well under way as the sun popped out in the late afternoon and began drying Muscat off.
Workers with chain saws could be seen clearing downed trees while fleets of tow trucks went to work wrenching waterlogged cars and trucks from riverbeds.
Some sections of the city still lacked power and phone services a day after Gonu's eye had passed.
"I've never seen anything like this," al-Mashrafi said, a group of friends around him nodding solemnly. "But this is life. Anything can happen."
Oman's weather centre, which has been keeping records since 1890, says Gonu could be the strongest storm to reach Oman's coast since 1977.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
RSS