World
Spain searches for bodies after unprecedented flooding claims at least 158 lives
Crews searched for bodies in stranded cars and sodden buildings Thursday as residents salvaged what they could from their ruined homes following monstrous flash floods in Spain that claimed at least 158 lives, with 155 deaths confirmed in the eastern Valencia region alone.
More horrors emerged Thursday from the debris and ubiquitous layers of mud left by the walls of water that produced Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory. The damage recalled the aftermath of a tsunami, with survivors left to pick up the pieces as they mourn their loved ones.
AT LEAST 63 DEAD IN DEVASTATING FLASH FLOODS ACROSS EASTERN SPAIN, OFFICIALS SAY
Cars were piled on one another like fallen dominoes, uprooted trees, downed power lines and household items all mired in mud that covered streets in dozens of communities in Valencia, a region south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast.
An unknown number of people are still missing and more victims could be found.
“Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles,” Spain’s Transport Minister Óscar Puente said early Thursday before the death toll spiked from 95 on Wednesday night.
Rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that tore through homes and businesses, sweeping away cars, people and everything else in its path. The floods demolished bridges and left roads unrecognizable.
Luís Sánchez, a welder, said he saved several people who were trapped in their cars on the flooded V-31 highway south of Valencia city. The road rapidly became a floating graveyard strewn with hundreds of vehicles.
“I saw bodies floating past. I called out, but nothing,” Sánchez said. “The firefighters took the elderly first, when they could get in. I am from nearby so I tried to help and rescue people. People were crying all over, they were trapped.”
Regional authorities said late Wednesday that rescuers in helicopters saved some 70 people stranded on rooftops and in cars, but ground crews were far from done.
Vehicles are seen piled up after being swept away by floods in Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)
“Our priority is to find the victims and the missing so we can help end the suffering of their families,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said after meeting with officials and emergency services in Valencia on Thursday, the first of three official days of mourning.
An ‘extraordinary’ deluge
Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory. Scientists link it to climate change, which is also behind increasingly high temperatures and droughts in Spain and the heating up of the Mediterranean Sea.
Human-caused climate change has doubled the likelihood of a storm like this week’s deluge in Valencia, according to a rapid but partial analysis Thursday by World Weather Attribution, comprising dozens of international scientists who study global warming’s role in extreme weather.
Spain has been suffering from an almost two-year drought, meaning that when the deluge happened late Tuesday and early Wednesday, the ground was so hard that it could not absorb the rain, leading to flash floods.
The violent weather event surprised regional government officials. Spain’s national weather service said it rained more in eight hours in the Valencian town of Chiva than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.”
In Paiporta, a community of 25,000 next to Valencia city where mayor Maribel Albalat said Thursday that not fewer than 62 people had perished.
“(Paiporta) never has floods, we never have this kind of problem. And we found a lot of elderly people in the town center,” Albalat told national broadcaster RTVE. “There were also a lot of people who came to get their cars out of their garages … it was a real trap.’
Farms damaged
While the most suffering was inflicted on municipalities near the city of Valencia, the storms unleashed their fury over huge swaths of the south and eastern coast of the Iberian peninsula. Two fatalities were confirmed in the neighboring Castilla La Mancha region and one in southern Andalusia.
Greenhouses and farms across southern Spain, known as Europe’s garden for its exported produce, were also ruined by heavy rains and flooding. The storms spawned a freak tornado in Valencia and a hail storm that punched holes in cars in Andalusia. Homes were left without water as far southwest as Malaga in Andalusia.
Heavy rains continued Thursday farther north as the Spanish weather agency issued alerts for several counties in Castellón, in the eastern Valencia region, and for Tarragona in Catalonia, as well as southwest Cadiz.
“This storm front is still with us,” the prime minister said. “Stay home and heed the official recommendation and you will help save lives.”
The search goes on amid the destruction
Over 1,000 soldiers from Spain’s emergency rescue units joined regional and local emergency workers in the search for bodies and survivors.
“We are searching house by house,” Ángel Martínez, with a military emergency unit, told Spain’s national radio RNE from the town of Utiel, where at least six people died.
An Associated Press journalist saw rescuers remove seven body bags from an underground garage in Barrio de la Torre on Thursday.
Many residents in both towns had to walk long distances in sticky mud to find food and water. Many of their cars had been destroyed and the mud, destruction and debris left by the storm made some roads unpassable. Some pushed shopping carts along sodden streets while others carried their children to keep them out of the muck.
Valencia regional President Carlos Mazón on Thursday asked if Spain’s army could assist with distributing basic goods to the population.
The National Police arrest 39 people for looting on Wednesday. The Civil Guard deployed officers to stop further thefts from homes, cars and shopping malls.
Some 150,000 people in Valencia were without electricity on Wednesday, but roughly half had power by Thursday, Spanish news agency EFE reported. An unknown number did not have running water and were relying on whatever bottled water they could find.
The region remained partly isolated with several roads cut off and train lines interrupted, including the high-speed service to Madrid. Officials said it will take two to three weeks to repair that damaged line.
A man wept as he showed a reporter from national broadcaster RTVE the shell of what was once the ground floor of his home in Catarroja, south of Valencia. It looked as though a bomb had detonated inside, obliterating furniture and belongings, and stripping the paint off some walls.
Investigators have ruled out that terrorism was at play after a man drove a car into crowd in the Italian city of Modena on Saturday, injuring eight people.
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The driver, a 31-year-old Italian man of Moroccan heritage, hit several people before crashing into a shop window, colliding head-on with a woman. Four people were in critical condition following the incident, authorities said.
The driver, an economics graduate born in 1995 who was not known to the police, went through a spell of “psychological disturbance” in 2022, city prefect Fabrizia Triolo said at a news conference on Saturday.
“He was under treatment in our mental health centres in 2022 because he had problems with schizoid illness, after which he disappeared from the radar and unfortunately reappeared in this form today in a dramatic and unfortunate way,” said the mayor of Modena, Massimo Mezzetti.
His home near Modena has been searched but sources quoted in Italian media said the investigation so far has shown no sign of the man’s radicalisation.
Several injured in critical condition
Among those injured were two foreign citizens: a German tourist on holiday in Italy and a Polish woman. The patients were transported to various hospitals in Emilia Romagna.
A 55-year-old woman, who was crushed against a shop window, is hospitalised at the Ospedale Maggiore in Bologna. The patient’s life is in danger and her legs were amputated.
In the same hospital, a 52-year-old man is in intensive care. A second injured man who was run over by the car also had his lower limbs amputated.
A 53-year-old woman and a 69-year-old woman were instead admitted to Baggiovara Hospital in Modena. In the same facility is a 69-year-old man, whose condition is judged to be less serious.
A 27-year-old girl, a 71-year-old woman and a 47-year-old man were hospitalised at the Policlinico di Modena: they suffered minor injuries and are not in a serious condition.
Pedestrians helped with arrest
Immediately after crashing into the shop window, the driver, identified as Salim El Koudri, abandoned the car and attempted to escape on foot.
The suspect tried to flee the scene but was chased and cornered by four passers-by, then pulled a knife and injured one of them.
Although the 31-year-old was armed with a knife with a 20-centimetre blade, the group managed to immobilise and contain him until the police arrived, to whom he was then handed over.
The Modena Public Prosecutor’s Office formalised the arrest of the attacker on heavy charges of massacre and injuries aggravated by the use of a weapon.
Prime Minister and President visit Modena
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and President Sergio Mattarella visited Modena on Sunday.
Meloni had quickly condemned the attack on social media and contacted the victims. She wrote on X that the incident was “extremely serious”.
“I would also like to express my thanks to the citizens who courageously intervened to detain the perpetrator, as well as to the law enforcement officers for their response,” she added.
“I trust that the person responsible will answer to the full for his actions,” Meloni added.
Some far-right politicians quickly seized on the incident as a justification for further tightening controls on immigration, even though the alleged perpetrator is an Italian citizen.
The League party, a member of Meloni’s governing coalition, said the incident showed the need for legislation to revoke residency permits for immigrants when they commit crimes.
League leader Matteo Salvini attempted to emphasise the nationality of origin of the attacker, calling the 31-year-old ‘a second-generation criminal’.
But the city’s mayor Mezzetti pointed out that two Egyptian nationals had helped stop the knife-wielding driver when he tried to run.
The city’s mayor said Modena should “unite against those who want to divide and sow hatred” and called for a gathering in the city centre later on Sunday for a “collective embrace”.
“At the moment I see so much looting on social media and elsewhere, and I want to invite you once again to reflect on the fact that foreigners are not all similar to those who committed this act, there are many honest ones who serve our community,” he added.
The imam of Ravarino, Abdelmajid Abouelala, speaking to the Gazzetta di Modena, said he had never met El Koudri.
“I do, however, know his father well. All I can say about him is that he is a good person, as is the rest of the family. A hard worker, the kind who makes home, work, home. An educated person who I have never heard bad things about”.
“We are really upset by what happened, ours is a small community, we all know each other. I have also asked friends and volunteers: no one knows Salim,” the local Islamic community contact person later said.
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By Jorge Mitssunaga
May 16, 2026
World
WHO declares Ebola outbreak in Central Africa a public health emergency after 80 suspected deaths
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The World Health Organization declared an Ebola outbreak in Central Africa an international public health emergency on Sunday after dozens of suspected deaths were reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring Uganda.
The outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo virus, does not meet the criteria for a pandemic emergency, the WHO said.
The declaration follows reports of 80 suspected deaths, eight laboratory-confirmed cases and 246 suspected cases as of Saturday across at least three health zones in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including Bunia, Rwampara and Mongbwalu.
The development comes as global health officials continue monitoring a rare hantavirus outbreak tied to the MV Hondius cruise ship, which left multiple passengers and crew members sick, and caused three deaths.
NEW EBOLA OUTBREAK LEAVES 65 DEAD AS OFFICIALS WARN OF CROSS-BORDER SPREAD
A health worker sprays disinfectant on a colleague after working at an Ebola treatment center in Beni, eastern Congo, on Sept. 9, 2018. (Al-hadji Kudra Maliro/AP)
As of May 13, the WHO said 11 hantavirus cases had been identified in connection with the cruise outbreak, including eight confirmed cases, two probable cases and one inconclusive case.
In neighboring Uganda’s capital, Kampala, the WHO said two apparently unrelated laboratory-confirmed Ebola cases — including one death — were reported Friday and Saturday involving people who had traveled from the DRC.
Another laboratory-confirmed case was reported in the DRC capital of Kinshasa involving a person returning from Ituri province.
Initial tests suggested the outbreak does not involve the Ebola Zaire strain, which caused Congo’s devastating 2018–2020 epidemic that killed more than 1,000 people.
EBOLA OUTBREAK REPORTED IN AFRICAN COUNTRY — HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Health workers wearing protective suits tend to an Ebola victim in an isolation tent in Beni, Congo, on July 13, 2019. (Jerome Delay/AP)
However, unlike Ebola-Zaire strains, there are currently no approved vaccines or therapeutics for the Bundibugyo strain, which the WHO described as making the outbreak “extraordinary.”
The WHO warned the outbreak could be larger than currently reported due to the high positivity rate among initial samples and the growing number of suspected cases.
The outbreak also poses a public health risk to other countries, the WHO said, urging nations to activate emergency-management systems and implement cross-border screening measures.
‘DISEASE X’ HAS KILLED DOZENS IN THE CONGO — HERE’S WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE MYSTERY ILLNESS
Ambulances parked at Bunia General Referral Hospital following confirmation of an Ebola outbreak involving the Bundibugyo strain in Bunia, Ituri province, Democratic Republic of Congo, May 16, 2026. (REUTERS/Victoire Mukenge)
Ebola is a highly contagious and often fatal disease spread through bodily fluids, including blood, vomit and semen. Symptoms can include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and internal bleeding.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently said Congo has a “strong track record” responding to Ebola outbreaks while announcing the release of $500,000 in emergency funding to support containment efforts.
The WHO said it will convene an emergency committee to review recommendations for how affected countries should respond.
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Health workers dressed in protective gear begin their shift at an Ebola treatment center in Beni, Congo, on July 16, 2019. (Jerome Delay/AP)
The organization did not recommend border closures or travel restrictions.
Congo has now recorded 17 Ebola outbreaks since the virus was first identified in the country in 1976.
Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr and Brittany Miller, along with Reuters, contributed to this report.
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