Floods kill 12 in Jordan

Flash floods killed 12 people in Jordan and forced nearly 4,000 tourists to flee the famed ancient desert city of Petra, emergency services said yesterday. Search teams were scouring valleys near the historic hill town of Madaba for a young girl who was still missing after Friday’s floods, civil defense spokesman Iyad Amru told state television.

Among those confirmed dead after torrential rains swept the south of the kingdom were six people found in the Madaba area southwest of the capital Amman. To the east, three people were killed near Dabaa on the Desert Highway, one of Jordan’s three main north-south arteries, while one was killed near Maan in the south.

It was not immediately clear where the other two died. Amru said two girls had gone missing in the Madaba region, later announcing that one of their bodies had been found. Government spokeswoman Jumana Ghneimat said authorities had alive found four Israeli tourists who had gone missing in the Wadi Rum desert in southern Jordan but were looking for two more.

“Our embassy in Tel Aviv contacted the Israeli foreign ministry for information on the identities of the missing Israelis,” Ghneimat said in statements carried by the state news agency Petra. A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry confirmed that contact had been lost with two Israeli tourists who were in Wadi Rum.