Ruptly
"Residents of the eastern countryside of Idlib rushed to reinforce embankments as widespread flooding inundated homes and farmlands due to a partial collapse of the Al Siha dam. Footage filmed on Saturday shows floodwaters sweeping through affected villages, spilling into residential areas. Farmers can be seen stemming the flashfloods by erecting makeshift earthen barriers, using simple equipment and sandbags in a desperate effort to curb the crisis. "Torrential rain and strong winds had devastated the earthen barriers, allowing water to spill into the homes, triggering nearly full evacuation of the village," Al-Baraghithi municipality head Ahmed Mohammed Al-Hamad said. "Water is now drifting westward towards farmland. Reinforcing the embankments is critical to prevent them from reaching residential areas and to avert a worsening humanitarian disaster," he continued. One of the flood-stricken farmers, Malik Mustafa, stressed that earthen barriers can 'no longer hold', appealing for necessary equipment, particularly excavators, to reinforce the barriers. "The storm had devastated the barrier, forcing us to flee suddenly and under unusual circumstances [...] The floodwaters engulfed everything we own; we escaped only with our lives," another farmer, Wardan Al-Daher, remarked. "Now we are striving to salvage what little remains after the waters receded. Had these embankments been reinforced earlier in the season, this disaster might have been avoided," he continued. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the eastern Idlib countryside witnessed the collapse of an earthen barrier of a water basin near the village of Taljina, unleashing large volumes of water flooding onto large tracts of farmlands. On Sunday, Syria's Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management in the transitional government warned that coastal regions, as well as Idlib, Aleppo, northern Raqqa, and Al-Hasakah, are likely to be affected by continued atmospheric instability. This is expected to bring intermittent thunderstorms, with rainfall ranging from moderate to heavy, from Sunday afternoon through to Monday evening."
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