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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion