Rescuers work to save hundreds in Japan

MARI YAMAGUCHI

TOKYO — Troops worked Thursday to rescue hundreds of people stranded by flooding in southern Japan. At least two people were found dead and nearly 20 were still unaccounted for in flooding that wrecked homes, roads and rice fields.

Heavy rain warnings were in effect for much of the southern main island of Kyushu after typhoon Nanmadol swept across Japan earlier in the week.

AuthoritiesinFukuokaonKyushu said six people were injured, two of them seriously. One man was found dead after he was buried by a mudslide. Four others were missing and feared dead in the city after being swept away by floodwaters or buried underneath mudslides.

In neighbouring Oita prefecture, where rivers also overflowed, a 43-year-old man dug up from a mudslide was pronounced dead, according to the Oita prefecture. Public broadcaster NHK said he was a rescue worker.

Four people were missing in Fukuoka, while 15 others were still unaccounted for in neighbouring Oita, according to prefectural disaster management websites.

Hundreds of people were trapped in areas by the floodwater, Kyodo News reported.

In one of the worst-hit towns, Asakura in Fukuoka, a man managed a narrow escape when a landslide crushed his home on a steep mountain slope, NHK said.

“I heard smashing and banging in the house, windows shattering, then floodwater gushed into the house, furniture floating around,” said Tsunemichi Motomatsu, who runs a liquor store with his wife.

“We struggled for life and somehow got out. Now I feel it’s a miracle both of us are still alive,” Motomatsu told NHK, pointing to his house, collapsed and half-buried in the mud.

Television footage showed rice fields and homes flooded after a river overflowed its banks, dragging vehicles into the riverbed and destroying dozens of buildings as well as roads and bridges. Soldiers waded gingerly through floodwaters, carrying an elderly man to safety and evacuating families using inflatable boats.

Nearly 600,000 people were ordered or advised to evacuate in Fukuoka, but only a fraction of them did, in part because the heavy rain worsened during the night. Only about 1,800 people had sought refuge in schools and other public facilities as of early Thursday,

CAIRO — Swarms of jellyfish have descended on Egypt’s northern coast, keeping vacationers out of the water and stirring debate over a recent expansion of the Suez Canal.

The nomad jellyfish is native to the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea but has been turning up in the Mediterranean in growing numbers in recent years. This year was the worst in recent memory. Wary bathers largely avoided the sea during the long Eid al-Fitr holiday last month, and social media was awash with pictures of the purple swarms and advice on how to treat stings.

The jellyfish have come through the Suez Canal, which was first built in 1869. It has been expanded on a number of occasions, most recently in 2015, through a multibillion-dollar project that the government touted as a historic achievement.

Egyptian officials deny the recent expansion is to blame, noting that the jellyfish turned up in the Mediterranean as early as the 1970s.

“It is not the first time it appears on Egypt’s north coast. This time the number was just larger than previous years,” said Mostafa Fouda, an adviser to the Environment Minister.

The ministry said it has set up an investigative committee to look into the “unprecedented phenomenon.” But it said the invasion was likely caused by an abundance of food, an increase in organic pollutants and a decline in natural predators. It said global warming might also be a factor.

Bella Galil, a scientist with the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv, also blamed the canal. She said pollution and global warming occur in much of the Mediterranean, but that only the Levant Basin — off the shores of Egypt, Israel and Lebanon — has five species of alien jellyfish.