World

Spain floods: Epicentre now a bizarre medley of debris – as video shows miraculous rescue

Published

6 months ago

October 31, 2024

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To walk through the streets of Paiporta is to see nature at its most vicious.

Everywhere, there is chaos in this town. Lives have been ripped apart, turned upside down and ended.

Spain floods latest: Looting breaks out as flood deaths surpass 150

You can’t drive into Paiporta, a suburb about 4 miles to the southwest of Valencia, so we cover the final mile by foot. For most of the walk, we pass past fruit groves. The sun is getting warmer.

It could be a normal day. Except then you arrive in the town, and normality has gone.

We turn a corner and find a road that has been wholly blocked by a wall of cars, thrown together.

To the side, a family is wading through their garage, which is under three feet of water.

All around is a bizarre medley of debris. Most of it is coated in thick, sticky mud that clings to everything – the road, your clothes and all these chunks of everyday life that have been swept away and mixed together.

So there is a child’s shoe, a beer chiller, a jumper, a corkscrew and a lump of an engine block. All of them muddled, muddy and sad.

“We have to clean,” says the woman, staring at the endless water in her garage. Her son is wading in, pulling out possessions.

There were three motorbikes in here, two of them new. All of them are ruined. Everything in sight is ruined. But they know they are lucky.

Down the road, on the other side of the wall of cars, they knew a couple who were in their car when the flood water came, with shocking speed.

They both died – two of forty people who are known to have died in this town so far.

The damage is utterly random. A car lies, absurdly, on top of a children’s slide. Paving stones lie in a pile while front doors flap open, offering a view of homes that have been engulfed by water and mud.

Outside, there are people trying to push the water away, using brooms and shovels.

Down the road, we visit Catarroja, normally a pretty town that welcomes plenty of tourists.

Now the main high street is covered in pebbles and as we drive in, we have to gingerly avoid holes in the road, industrial dustbins that have rolled into the street, and a long line of crumpled vehicles.

Everywhere we go, in fact, it is the cars that are the symbol of these floods – tossed around carelessly, thrown into gardens, into a playground, into rivers and streams, on top of each other and into houses.

They are smashed, upturned, filthy, and broken, and the cars have, in turn, broken so much else. When the water rushed through these towns, it picked them up and used them as weapons.

A woman walks past, pleading with me to tell the world that they have no water and no food. Everything has been cut off and the shops are shut.

Half an hour later, I see her and a friend walking along the street with a shopping trolley loaded with food, arguing with other people. They have, quite clearly, helped themselves to what they needed.

Across the road, half-wedged in a tree, is a boat. We are a decent way from the sea, and nobody seems to know whose boat it is, or where it came from.

But there it is, a symbol of how this flood created such instant discordant chaos.

We meet Veronica, walking along with her two children. She is taking them to a grandparent, whose house is out of town.

She tells me that they had precious little warning before the flood hit – merely a request earlier in the day to take children home from school because there was a storm on the way.

“One minute there was just rain and then there was two metres of water,” she says.

“It was very scary. People have been hurt and some people have died. Now we have to help each other to repair this town.”

She looks around. “It will take a long time.”

There are happier stories, tales of survival and courage. Three young girls come to talk to us in the street, showing us a video of their father rescuing a man from the water at the very moment their road had turned into a churning river (VIDEO AT TOP).

The man, a local called Luis, is being swept along, desperate to survive.

Their father, leaning out of the window of the family’s apartment, has thrown down a rope and is clinging on.

As we watch, you can hear the screams of the man and the encouraging shouts of the onlookers.

Slowly, slowly, he is pulled out of the water and clambers over a balcony to safety.

The girls burst with pride; their father, clearly, saved this man’s life. In the midst of this horror, there are shards of valour and joy.

World

Lack of heavy rescue equipment into Gaza leaves hundreds to die slow deaths under rubble

Published

11 hours ago

April 16, 2025

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Lack of heavy rescue equipment into Gaza leaves hundreds to die slow deaths under rubble

It was in the evening that the bombing started to intensify.

Salah Jundia, his father and brothers huddled together in their home in Shujaiyya, just east of Gaza City, trying to work out what to do.

It was too risky for them to leave at night. There were a lot of them too. Extended family living across four storeys. They decided they would wait until after dawn prayers.

The explosion tore through the building just before 5am, collapsing one storey on to the next.

Jundia says he survived because pieces of bedroom furniture fell on top of him.

Then he looked for his father and brothers.

“I found one of them calling for help. I removed the rubble covering him with my hands. Then I saw another brother covered in rubble but he was dead,” he told Sky News.

Jundia added: “My father was also dead. My other brother was also dead. We got them out and that is when I saw that the whole building had collapsed.”

Over the next few hours, they scrambled to rescue who they could.

An aunt and uncle and one of their children, Shaimaa. Uncle Imad and his son Mohammad. The bodies of Montasir and Mustaf.

Jundia says he could hear cries for help, but they were coming from deep in the rubble and were impossible to reach.

The rescue teams on site – civil defence they are called – did not have the kit to clear through three floors of 500 square metres, 30cm slabs of concrete.

In the afternoon, Jundia says Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) told rescue teams to leave as they would be resuming their bombardment.

Jundia buried the bodies he had managed to pull out but he knew 15 of his family members, 12 of them children, were still somewhere inside the rubble, still crying for help.

He made a desperate video appeal, begging the Red Cross and Arab countries to pressure Israel to grant access to the site. It was picked up on a few social media accounts.

Israel won’t allow heavy equipment into Gaza. No diggers or bulldozers, nor the fuel or generators to run them.

They say it will fall into Hamas’s hands.

It was a major sticking point during the ceasefire and it is a major issue now as the bombardment continues, given the fact that hundreds if not thousands of civilians might survive if there were the equipment to extract them.

Civil defence trying to get to the Jundia family home over the next few days were halted because the IDF were in the vicinity. A family friend tried himself and was killed.

The footage that our camera teams have shot in Shujaiyya over the past two weeks shows how civil defence teams struggle to save those who are trapped and injured with the most rudimentary of equipment – plastering trowels, sledgehammers, ropes and small drills.

“The tight siege stops civil defence equipment from getting in,” says one.

They added: “So we are taking much longer to respond to these events. Time is a factor in getting these people out. So we call immediately for the necessary equipment to be allowed in for the civil defence to use.”

The IDF say they are investigating the circumstances around the Jundia family as a result of our enquiries.

In relation to the access of heavy equipment into Gaza, they say they work closely with international aid organisations to enable the delivery of humanitarian activities in accordance with international law.

The last contact Jundia had from beneath the rubble was a phone call from his uncle Ziad, three days after the strike.

“The line was open for 25 seconds then it went dead. We don’t know what happened. We tried to call, but there was no answer,” he says.

He and his family were displaced several times before they returned home to Shujaiyya – to Rafah in the south, then Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.

Along the way, Jundia lost one brother and a nephew to Israeli bombs.

“We were happy and all the family came back. We went back to our house. It was damaged, but we improvised and we lived in it. We have nothing to do with the resistance. We are not interested in wars. But we have been gravely harmed,” he says.

World

China’s economy surges, but tariffs effect is yet to be seen

Published

11 hours ago

April 16, 2025

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China's economy surges, but tariffs effect is yet to be seen

China’s economy performed better than expected in the first quarter of the year – but it reflects a moment in time before the explosive trade war with the US, which has seen the world’s two biggest economies effectively decouple.

Economists had predicted that gross domestic product would grow by about 5.1% in January to March, compared with a year earlier. In the end, it grew 5.4%.

But these impressive figures obscure the very serious challenges China’s economy is facing in the wake of Donald Tump’s trade war – and it is almost certain growth will not remain this strong as the year goes on.

The worst of Trump’s tariffs came into force in April, meaning they were not reflected in these figures.

In Q1, China faced an initial 10% tariff on all its exports to the US – which was then raised to 20% from 10 March.

But Beijing had planned and prepared for taxes at that level, and thus the impact was pretty minimal.

Growth was also propelled by the fact that exporters rushed to deliver orders in bulk before the tariffs came into force.

In fact, exports surged a remarkable 12% in March compared to a year earlier, a rate that will not be sustained.

Current tariffs on goods sold from China to America stand at 145%. Trade at that price is all but impossible.

Given exports account for a fifth of China’s economy, and consumer confidence domestically is still sluggish, there will be a significant hit to come.

Experts agree China will most likely miss its annual growth target of 5% – the question is by how much.

World

Palestinian man forced to abandon loved ones trapped beneath rubble after IDF warning

Published

14 hours ago