{"id":19904,"date":"2018-10-26T12:23:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T12:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19904"},"modified":"2018-10-26T12:23:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T12:23:20","slug":"jordan-floods-schoolchildren-among-19-dead-after-bus-swept-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19904","title":{"rendered":"Jordan floods: Schoolchildren among 19 dead after bus swept away"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"95\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">At least 19 people, mostly children, were killed when torrential rains swept away a bus carrying students and teachers touring near the Dead Sea, according to sources in the country&#8217;s civil defence directorate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The director general of the kingdom&#8217;s Civil Defence, Mustafa al-Basaiah, said on Friday that 13 of the dead were middle school students.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\"><strong><\/strong>The official news agency Petra said \u00a037 students, along with seven adults, had been touring near the Dead Sea when heavy rains unleashed flash floods in the area.<\/p>\n<p>A number of families picnicking in the popular destination were also among the dead and injured, rescuers said, without giving a breakdown of numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Petra said Jordanian Prime Minister Omar Razzaz was on the scene to oversee the rescue mission. King Abdullah also cancelled a trip to Bahrain to follow the rescue operations, Petra reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It was reported that Jordanian authorities requested Israeli assistance in the search and rescue effort.<\/p>\n<p>Israel sent search-and-rescue helicopters to help, an Israeli military statement said.<\/p>\n<p>It said the Israeli team, was operating on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea, where a bus carrying the students and teachers was swept into a valley by rain-stoked floodwaters. Heavy rain is set to continue across the region into Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Thursday&#8217;s incident is the second tragedy resulting from flooding near the Dead Sea this year.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"imagecontainer item\" data-image-url=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/mritems\/Images\/2018\/10\/25\/5215fd00f9a2451499685930221b09a7_18.jpg\">\n<table class=\"image\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody readability=\"1.5\">\n<tr>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/mritems\/Images\/2018\/10\/25\/5215fd00f9a2451499685930221b09a7_18.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr readability=\"3\">\n<td class=\"caption\">A child survivor is helped as residents and relatives gather outside a hospital near the Dead Sea [Muhammad Hamed\/Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At least 19 people, mostly children, were killed when torrential rains swept away a bus carrying students and teachers touring near the Dead Sea, according to sources in the country&#8217;s civil defence directorate. The director general of the kingdom&#8217;s Civil Defence, Mustafa al-Basaiah, said on Friday that 13 of the dead were middle school students.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}