67 Die, Many Missing in Iran Floods

Flash floods triggered by heavy rain have inundated farms and villages in much of northeastern Iran, killing at least 67 people, state media and officials said Saturday.

Dozens of villagers in Golestan and Khorasan provinces were stranded by flood waters while others are feared missing, the official Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, reported.

The report said 67 people, all from Golestan, have died in the flooding.

“Nobody in the region can remember there ever being such a devastating flood,” said the governor of Golestan, Ali Asghar Ahmadi. Three helicopters have joined rescue operations, he added.

Ahmadi’s office warned of further flooding as the rains were expected to continue over the weekend.

Since Friday, rains have flooded 14 villages and 37,000 acres of farmland in Golestan, according to Abolqasem Safavi, head of the provincial office for natural disasters.

In the town of Kalaleh, 310 miles northeast of Tehran, the floods have disrupted water, electricity and gas services, Safavi said.

In Khorasan, state radio quoted an official as saying 25 people were missing from the village of Jajarm, about 62 miles southeast of Kalaleh.

But an official from the Interior Ministry’s Natural Disaster Office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there have been no confirmed deaths in Khorasan.

A portion of the main road linking Tehran with the holy city of Mashhad and beyond to the border with Turkmenistan was washed out, blocking traffic and stranding residents, IRNA quoted Ali Khosrawi, an official in Minudasht, as saying.