Around 40 Saudi officials and contractors have been detained in the probe into the Nov. 25 flood in Jeddah that killed 120 people, local media reported yesterday.
Eight top officials of the Red Sea city’s mayor’s office were taken away by police on Sunday as an unprecedented public investigation was underway, driven by public anger over the disaster, the Saudi Gazette reported.
The Jeddah officials rounded up by two dozen police officers included an assistant to the mayor, four department heads, and the former head of the city’s projects division, the Jeddah-based daily said.
That came on the heels of another 30 or more officials, consultants and contractors being taken in by police earlier to face an investigation committee ordered by King Abdullah and led by Prince Khaled al-Faisal, the powerful governor of the Mecca region, which includes Jeddah.
On Nov. 25, uncommonly heavy rainfall sparked a flash flood in the kingdom’s second largest city that submerged homes and roadways, drowning 120 people and leaving another 40 unaccounted for.
Thousands were left homeless and more than 7,000 vehicles were destroyed in the city, which has a population estimated at more than 3 million.
The disaster provoked unprecedented outrage, with Jeddah citizens calling on the Internet for the sacking of public officials who had not kept their promises to build adequate drainage in the city.
King Abdullah has said several times that officials and others found responsible for mismanagement will be punished.
“We will not show any leniency to any official who is found negligent in this case,” he told the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Siyassah in an interview published on Saturday.
Meanwhile, in other news, Saudi Arabia beheaded a Yemeni by the sword in the Jeddah region on Sunday.
Suleiman bin Ali was found guilty of beating and raping the wife of a Saudi, media reported.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing