KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas parents frantically posted photos of their young daughters on social media with pleas for information as at least 23 campers from an all-girls summer camp were unaccounted for Friday after floods tore through the state’s south-central region overnight.

At least 24 people were dead and many missing after a storm unleashed nearly a foot of rain just before dawn Friday and sent floodwaters gushing out of the Guadalupe River, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters Friday evening. The flood-prone region known as Hill Country is dotted with century-old summer camps that draw thousands of kids annually from across the Lone Star State.

State officials said 23 to 25 girls from Camp Mystic, a riverside Christian camp in Hunt, Texas, still were unaccounted for. They declined to estimate how many people were missing across the region but said a massive search was underway, with 237 rescued so far.

“I’m asking the people of Texas, do some serious praying,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said. “On-your-knees kind of praying that we find these young girls.”

Rescuers evacuate some campers by helicopter

Texas Game Wardens said Friday afternoon that they had arrived at Camp Mystic and were starting to evacuate campers who had sheltered on higher ground.

Elinor Lester, 13, said she was evacuated with her cabinmates by helicopter after wading through floodwaters. She recalled startling awake around 1:30 a.m. as thunder crackled and water pelted the cabin windows.

Lester was among the older girls housed on elevated ground known as Senior Hill. Cabins housing the younger campers, who can start attending at age 8, are situated along the riverbanks and were the first to flood, she said.

Campers in lower cabins sought shelter up the hill. By morning, they had no food, power or running water, she said. When rescuers arrived, Lester said they tied a rope for the girls to hold as they walked across a bridge with floodwaters whipping up around their calves and knees.

“The camp was completely destroyed,” she said. “It was really scary. Everyone I know personally is accounted for, but there are people missing that I know of and we don’t know where they are.”

Her mother, Elizabeth Lester, said her son was nearby at Camp La Junta and also escaped. A counselor there woke up to find water rising in the cabin, opened a window and helped the boys swim out. Camp La Junta and another camp on the river, Camp Waldemar, said in Instagram posts that all campers and staff there were safe.

Elizabeth Lester sobbed when she finally saw her daughter, who was clutching a small teddy bear and a book. She said a friend’s daughter, who was a counselor for the younger children at Camp Mystic, was among the missing.

“My kids are safe, but knowing others are still missing is just eating me alive,” she said.

Families of missing campers worry

Dozens of families shared in local Facebook groups that they received devastating phone calls from safety officials informing them that their daughters had not yet been located among the washed-away camp cabins and downed trees.

Camp Mystic said in an email to parents of the roughly 750 campers that if they have not been contacted directly, their child is accounted for.

At an elementary school in nearby Ingram that was being used as a reunification center, more than a hundred people stood around a courtyard Friday afternoon with hopes of seeing their loved ones emerge from buses dropping off those who had been evacuated. One young girl wearing a Camp Mystic T-shirt stood in a puddle in her white socks, sobbing in her mother’s arms.

Many families hoped to see loved ones who had been at campgrounds and mobile home parks in the area.

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Camp Mystic sits on a strip known as “flash flood alley,” said Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, a charitable endowment that is collecting donations to help nonprofits responding to the disaster.

“When it rains, water doesn’t soak into the soil,” Dickson said. “It rushes down the hill.”

State officials began warning of potential deadly weather a day earlier. The National Weather Service had predicted 3 to 6 inches of rain in the region, but 10 inches fell.

The Guadalupe River rose to 26 feet within about 45 minutes in the early morning hours, submerging its flood gauge, Patrick said.

Decades prior, floodwaters engulfed a bus of teenage campers from another Christian camp along the Guadalupe River during devastating summer storms in 1987. A total of 10 campers from Pot O’ Gold Christian camp drowned after their bus was unable to evacuate in time from a site near Comfort, 33 miles (53 kilometers) east of Hunt.

Flood turns Camp Mystic into a horror story

Chloe Crane, a teacher and former Camp Mystic counselor, said her heart broke when a fellow teacher shared an email from the camp about the missing girls.

“To be quite honest, I cried because Mystic is such a special place, and I just couldn’t imagine the terror that I would feel as a counselor to experience that for myself and for 15 little girls that I’m taking care of,” she said. “And it’s also just sadness, like the camp has been there forever and cabins literally got washed away.”

Crane said the camp, which was established in 1926, is a haven for young girls looking to gain confidence and independence. She recalled happy memories teaching her campers about journalism, making crafts and competing in a camp-wide canoe race at the end of each summer. Now for many campers and counselors, their happy place has turned into a horror story, she said.

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Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.

A United Nations report targeting Israel and companies that operate within the country entitled “Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide” is sparking backlash and concern.

The report was authored and presented by U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, a controversial figure who has been condemned by multiple nations for making allegedly antisemitic remarks. In her latest report, she calls for sanctions against “entities and individuals involved in activities that may endanger the Palestinians.”

UN EXPERT REPEATS ISRAEL ‘GENOCIDE’ CLAIMS AFTER US CALLS FOR HER REMOVAL

NGO Monitor Legal Advisor Anne Herzberg said that while it’s not surprising that Albanese would issue a scathing report on Israel, as she has done so many times in the past, this latest report was unique.  

“I think that the difference now is that this report explicitly endorses adopting BDS — boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel — in a very overt way,” Herzberg told Fox News Digital. She added that even though Albanese is an independent investigator, the report could be interpreted as the U.N. supporting the BDS movement against Israel.

In response to a Fox News Digital request for comment, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said “special procedures experts,” like Albanese “work on a voluntary basis,” do not receive a salary and are not U.N. staff.

“While the U.N. Human Rights office acts as the secretariat for special procedures, the experts serve in their individual capacity and are independent from any government or organization, including OHCHR and the U.N.,” OHCHR’s media team told Fox News Digital. “Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.N. or OHCHR.”

 Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on Feb. 26, 2025. (REUTERS/Denis Balibouse)

REVEALED: THE EXTENSIVE PERKS UN OFFICIALS RECEIVE AMID BUDGET CRISIS

Herzog told Fox News Digital that not only did Albanese overstep the boundaries of her role,  but so did the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC), as it does not have the authority to issue sanctions, something the report recommends.

“The U.N. Human Rights Council, which is where she presented her report, and that’s under whose auspices she is working, does not have the power under the U.N. charter to issue sanctions,” Herzog said. “And so not only has she overstepped her mandate as a rapporteur, the U.N. Human Rights Council by endorsing this, not endorsing the report, but by allowing this report to be published.”

Herzog said she saw “threatening and harassing” letters that Albanese sent to companies and NGOs “basically threatening them with being included on her boycott list and claiming that they were complicit in international crimes like genocide, apartheid, blocking self-determination or Palestinians.” 

Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, speaks during a press conference at the European headquarters of the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, on Dec. 11, 2024. (REUTERS/Pierre Albouy)

ISRAEL TURNS TABLES ON UN OFFICIAL CLAIMING ‘GENOCIDE’ IN GAZA WITH BASIC QUESTIONS

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is a voluntary code that companies can sign on to as a pledge to be mindful of how their operations run and their customers are treated. Herzog argued that Albanese “weaponizes this voluntary positive, pluralistic framework” and that she does so improperly, making it a “binding punitive framework.”

“Not only is she distorting international law, she’s distorting this UNGP framework, and I suspect that if this type of activity of hers gains purchase or other people start following in her footsteps, she’s going to be responsible for basically destroying the whole area of business and human rights.”

Albanese presented her report to the UNHRC on Thursday, just two days after the U.S. called for her removal over her “years-long pattern of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias.” 

In the report, Albanese claims that corporations have aided Israel in “its ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza.” She repeated this claim at UNHRC on Thursday, charging Israel with being “responsible for one of the cruelest genocides in modern history.” She also accused Israel of using the war in Gaza as a testing ground for new weapons “to exterminate a people without restraint.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva Daniel Meron, who was not present at the UNHRC meeting, told Fox News Digital that through her report Albanese is “willingly spearheading the global efforts to promote terrorism propaganda.”

“This report, just like all others by this rapporteur, is riddled with inflammatory rhetoric and is legally baseless,” Meron told Fox News Digital. “Her obsession with demonizing Israel is clear in the narrative she pushes.”

Albanese did not respond to Fox News Digital’s questions or request for comment in time for publication.

Here are the key events on day 1,227 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Saturday, July 5 :

Fighting

• Russian air defences have downed dozens of Ukrainian drones in widely dispersed parts of the country, including two near the country’s second-largest city, Saint Petersburg, according to officials.
• All external power lines supplying electricity to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine were down for several hours before being restored, the UN nuclear watchdog said.
• Ukrainian authorities blamed Russian shelling for the power cut, adding that technicians had to take action to restore it.
• Dutch and German intelligence agencies say that Russia is increasing its use of prohibited chemical weapons in Ukraine, including the World War I-era poison gas chloropicrin. Moscow denies this.

Weapons

• United States President Donald Trump said he discussed sending Patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine in calls with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
• A German government spokesman said the country was exploring the possibility of purchasing more Patriot air defence systems from the US for Ukraine.

Politics and diplomacy

• Trump said that he discussed sanctions with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a Thursday call, who is worried about them and understands they might be forthcoming.
• The US president repeated that he was “very unhappy” with his Russian counterpart, adding: “He wants to go all the way, just keep killing people – it is no good.”
• Zelenskyy says he agreed with Trump, to work to strengthen Ukraine’s air defences, as concerns mounted in Kyiv over US military aid deliveries. The two leaders had a “very important and fruitful conversation” by phone on Friday, Zelenskyy said.
• German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius will travel to Washington later this month for talks with his US counterpart about air defence systems, as well as production capacities, the ministry said.