Severe weather sweeps Mideast, 6 dead in Egypt
Severe weather swept across the Middle East on Sunday, pounding Israel with baseball-sized hail, sending torrents of uncollected garbage through the streets of Beirut and killing six people in Egypt, five of whom were electrocuted by a fallen power cable.
The cable from a tramway in the coastal city of Alexandria landed in streets flooded with water, electrocuting the five, senior health official Magdy Hegazy said. He said a sixth person, a judge, drowned when he was trapped in his car by the floodwaters.
The flooding in Egypt's second-largest city, a major port and former shipping and trade center, underlines how basic infrastructure such as drainage systems are still lacking despite the demands of a surging population. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi ordered the government to provide aid to the Alexandria area.
