AMMAN: At least 21 people were killed in flash floods in Jordan, most of them children whose school bus was swept away, emergency services said on Friday, in what a government newspaper dubbed a "Tragedy at the Dead Sea".
Another 35 people were injured following heavy rains on Thursday, including members of the security forces involved in rescue operations, a civil defence official told AFP. A security source said rescuers were still searching for eight people missing in the Dead Sea area, a popular tourist attraction around 50-km west of Amman.
"The number of victims has risen to 21. Most of them were schoolchildren aged between 11 and 14, who were on a school trip in the Dead Sea area" when they were swept away by the floodwaters, he said.
Security officials said the pupils, their teachers and minders had stepped out of their bus in a tourist area called Al-Miyah al-Sakhina when they were hit by a flash flood that washed them towards the nearby Dead Sea.
Also among the dead were visitors who had been picnicking in the area, the civil defence said, adding that a nearby bridge had collapsed. Jordanian television reported that King Abdullah II called off a planned visit to Bahrain and returned home from the Gulf.
"My sadness and sorrow are matched only by my anger at anyone who did not take the steps that could have prevented this painful incident," he wrote on Twitter. He chaired an emergency meeting with senior officials and called for a thorough investigation to determine who was responsible for what he termed the "great disaster that hurt us all as Jordanians".
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