heavy

At least 10 injured as traffic and trains disrupted amid severe weather and rising floodwaters across multiple regions.

Landslides and floods triggered by heavy rains have caused more than 40 deaths in Sri Lanka, where the authorities have stopped passenger trains and closed roads in some parts of the country, officials say.

The government’s Disaster Management Centre on Thursday said 25 of the reported deaths occurred in the mountainous tea-growing regions of Badulla and Nuwara Eliya in central Sri Lanka about 300km (186 miles) east of the capital, Colombo.

Another 21 people were missing due to landslides in the same areas while 10 people were injured, the centre said.

Sri Lanka began experiencing severe weather last week, made worse by downpours over the weekend that wreaked havoc by flooding homes, fields and roads.

Reservoirs and rivers have overflowed, blocking roads. Some key roads connecting the provinces have been closed, officials said.

Authorities stopped trains in some areas in the mountainous region after rocks, mud and trees fell onto railway tracks. Local television showed workers removing the debris. In some areas, floods have inundated the tracks.

Local television showed an air force helicopter rescuing three people stranded on the roof of a house marooned by floods while navy and police used boats to transport residents.

Footage also showed a car being swept away by floodwaters near the eastern town of Ampara, about 410km (256 miles) east of Colombo, killing three passengers.

This week’s weather-related toll is the highest since June last year when 26 people were killed due to heavy rains. In December, 17 people were killed by flooding and landslides.

The worst flooding this century was in June 2003 when 254 people were killed.

Sri Lanka depends on seasonal monsoon rains for irrigation and hydroelectricity, but experts have warned that the country faces more frequent floods due to the climate crisis.

Forecasters warn more flooding, landslides expected as tens of thousands of people are evacuated from their homes.

Authorities in Vietnam say at least 41 people have been killed in a barrage of torrential rain, flooding and landslides, as rescue crews worked to save stranded people from the rooftops of submerged homes.

Rainfall exceeded 150cm (60 inches) over the past three days in several parts of central Vietnam, a region home to a key coffee production belt and the country’s most popular beaches.

At least 41 people have been killed across six provinces since Sunday, while the search was continuing for nine others, the environment ministry said on Thursday.

More than 52,000 houses were flooded, and nearly 62,000 people were evacuated from their homes, while several major roads remained blocked due to landslides, and one million customers were left without electricity.

A suspension bridge on the Da Nhim River in Lam Dong province was swept away on Thursday morning, the VietnamNet newspaper reported.

Photos taken by the AFP news agency also showed hundreds of cars underwater as flooding inundated entire city blocks in Nha Trang, a popular tourist spot on the coast.

Local business owner Bui Quoc Vinh said his ground-floor restaurants and shops were under about a metre (3.2 feet) of water in the city.

“I am worried about our furniture in my restaurants and shops, but of course I cannot do anything now,” he told AFP.

“I don’t think the water is going to recede soon, as the rain has not stopped.”

The national weather forecast agency has warned of more flooding and landslides on Friday, with heavy rain set to continue in the region.

Deputy Prime Minister Ho Quoc Dung told the leaders of three flood-affected provinces – Khanh Hoa, Dak Lak and Gia Lai – to mobilise the army, police and other security forces to “promptly relocate and evacuate people” to safe areas, according to a government statement.

Meanwhile, state media reported that rescuers using boats in Gia Lai and Dak Lak pried open windows and broke through roofs to assist residents stranded by high water on Wednesday.

Photographs shared in state media reports showed residents, including children, sitting on the roofs of flooded houses and calling for help via social media platforms.

“Any group out there please help! We’ve been sitting on the roof since 10pm last night, including kids and adults,” a resident of Khanh Hoa province posted on a local Facebook page.

Natural disasters have left 279 people dead or missing in Vietnam and caused more than $2bn in damage between January and October, according to the national statistics office.

The Southeast Asian nation is prone to heavy rain between June and September, but experts say the climate crisis has made extreme weather events more frequent and destructive.

The Israeli military has killed at least three Palestinians in Gaza, as the coastal enclave reeled from heavy rains flooding shoddy makeshift tents housing thousands who have been denied adequate shelter owing to Israel’s continued throttling of aid supplies.

A source at Nasser Medical Complex told Al Jazeera on Sunday that three people had been killed after Israel bombed east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. That same day, Israel also struck Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood and areas close to the southern city of Rafah.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili said the Israeli army was still targeting locations inside the so-called yellow line, which demarcates where troops have withdrawn as part of the ceasefire.

Al-Khalili said the situation was “going from bad to worse” for families living near the yellow line, as the military continued to “demolish residential buildings” and “spread panic” while they contended with heavy rains flooding makeshift shelters.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that 13,000 families in Gaza whose homes were destroyed during two years of indiscriminate Israeli bombardment are now exposed to freezing temperatures and flooding in woefully inadequate shelters.

UN data shows that more than 80 percent of all buildings and housing units in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the start of the war. But Israel continues to block the entry of tents and mobile homes into the enclave despite the ceasefire, which was meant to unleash a flow of aid to stricken residents.

Tamara Alrifai, UNRWA’s director of communications, said Israel had placed limitations on what could enter the enclave, banning certain items deemed to be of dual use that could potentially be used for military purposes. “Israel … would take out many items that are extremely needed, especially in this winter situation,” she said.

“UNRWA is under double the amount of scrutiny and restrictions than other agencies despite being the largest agency there,” Alrifai said, adding that the UN agency has enough supplies to fill 6,000 aid trucks from its warehouses in Egypt and Jordan.

‘Submerged’

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said: “It’s been raining for two days and people are telling us that everything has started to leak. Many of these displacement camps are at a different elevation to surrounding areas, allowing water to run in from all sides. Some areas are completely submerged.”

“For people sheltering inside bombed-out buildings, everything is leaking, and there is a risk that with the heavy rains, the buildings could collapse. People who set up tents near the coast are at risk of strong tides washing away their tents,” he said.

Abdulrahman Asaliyah, a displaced Palestinian in the city, told Al Jazeera: “All the tents have been flooded, people’s mattresses, their food, their water, their clothes. Everything has been soaked. We are calling for help for new tents that can at least protect people from the winter cold.”

Caroline Seguin, Gaza emergency coordinator at Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym, MSF), said that many people were awakened by the floods and were afraid to go back to sleep. “In Gaza, it is a luxury to spend the night in a dry place,” she told Al Jazeera.

Seguin said Israel was still putting up barriers to much-needed aid entering the enclave. Bringing in supplies, including tents and medication, was still “very complicated”, she said, requiring “even more administrative processes” from the Israeli side.

Netanyahu unsure about truce duration

Since the start of the ceasefire agreement last month, at least 266 people have been killed and 635 wounded by Israeli attacks, adding to a grim toll now approaching 70,000 deaths.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that he did not know how long the Gaza ceasefire would hold, adding that Israel was still expecting the remains of three captives to be returned by Hamas.

Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, has been undertaking efforts with the Red Cross to locate the remains of captives under mountains of rubble left behind by Israeli bombardment.

Netanyahu also said that his opposition to a Palestinian state had “not changed one bit”, one day before the UN Security Council votes on a United States-drafted resolution mentioning a “credible pathway” to Palestinian statehood that would mandate an international stabilisation force in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank continued unabated, with raids on two camps that left two young Palestinians dead.

Soldiers shot Jadallah Jihad Jumaa Jadallah, a 15-year-old ninth-grade student, as they raided the Far’a camp, located south of the city of Tubas in the West Bank, preventing paramedics from assisting him, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Separately, the military also killed Hassan Sharkasi during a raid on the Askar refugee camp east of Nablus, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Palestinians call for better tents and other supplies as Israel maintains restrictions on aid to war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

Displaced Palestinians are reeling after heavy rains flooded their tents in makeshift displacement camps in Gaza City, as the United Nations warns that Israeli restrictions on aid have left hundreds of thousands of families without adequate shelter.

Abdulrahman Asaliyah, a displaced Palestinian man, told Al Jazeera on Friday that residents’ mattresses, clothes and other belongings were soaked in the flooding.

“We are calling for help, for new tents that can at least protect people from the winter cold,” he said, explaining that nearly two dozen people had been working for hours to get the water to drain from the area.

“This winter rain is a blessing from God, but there are families who no longer wish for it to fall, fearing for the lives of their children and their own survival,” Asaliyah said.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Friday’s flooding primarily affected Palestinians in the north of the Strip, where hundreds of thousands of people have returned following last month’s ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Flooding was also reported in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, said the rescue agency, which urged the international community to do more to “address the suffering” of Palestinians whose homes were destroyed in Israel’s two-year war on the enclave.

“We urge the swift delivery of homes, caravans, and tents to these displaced families to help alleviate their suffering, especially as we are at the beginning of winter,” it said in a statement.

While the October 10 ceasefire has allowed more aid to get into the Gaza Strip, the UN and other humanitarian groups say Palestinians still lack adequate food, medicine and other critical supplies, including shelter.

Aid groups working to provide shelter assistance in the occupied Palestinian territory said in early November that about 260,000 Palestinian families, totalling almost 1.5 million people, were vulnerable as the cold winter months approached.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said this week that it has enough shelter supplies to help as many as 1.3 million Palestinians.

But UNRWA said Israel continues to block its efforts to bring aid into Gaza despite the ceasefire deal, which stipulated that humanitarian assistance must be delivered to Palestinians in need.

“We have a very short chance to protect families from the winter rains and cold,” Angelita Caredda, Middle East and North Africa director at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said in a statement on November 5.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah on Friday, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said Palestinians across Gaza have been voicing fears that this winter would be particularly difficult due to the lack of safe shelter.

“It only rained for a couple of minutes – 30 minutes or so … [and] they were completely flooded,” she said. “Their tents are very fragile and worn-out; they have been using them for the past two years.”

She added that most Palestinians do not have any other options but to remain in tent camps or overcrowded shelters, despite the difficulties.

“We’re already seeing Palestinian children walking barefoot. They do not have winter clothes. They do not have blankets. And at the same time, the aid that is coming in … is being restricted,” Khoudary said.

Back in Gaza City, another displaced Palestinian man affected by the heavy rains, Abu Ghassan, said he and his family “no longer have a normal life”.

“I’m lifting the mattresses so the children don’t get soaked,” he told Al Jazeera. “But the little ones were already drenched here. We don’t even have proper tents.”

The makeshift homes of displaced Palestinians in Gaza have been flooded by heavy rainfall, as millions prepare for winter in the enclave without adequate shelter or relief.

A HUGE heavy metal band has announced their first UK show in over a decade, after they retired from touring.

The 70s band, who who are best known for We’re Not Gonna Take It and I Wanna Rock, are heading back on the road – and they are heading to the UK.

Formed in New Jersey in the 70s, American rockers Twisted Sister are coming out of tour retirement and making a stop in Wales.

The much-loved band revealed in September they were heading back out on the road again, after nearly a decade of not touring.

Twisted Sister, who are headed up by Dee Snider, have now announced their first UK show which will see them headline the Welsh festival Steelhouse.

Organisers have brought in the legendary heavy metal band to celebrate 15 years of the festival – which next year will take place from July 24 to 26.

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They will take to the stage at the iconic Welsh festival, which is held at the mountainous Hafod-y-Dafal Farm, Aberbeeg, Ebbw Vale.

Speaking about booking Twisted Sister, Steelhouse promoters Max and Mike said: “We thought 15 years was worth celebrating in the biggest possible way.

“And what better way to do that with one of the most iconic names in metal – Twisted f***ing Sister!

“To have them come and celebrate their milestone 50 years with us is an absolute and unbelievable honour.”

The statement ended: “When Dee Snider came and laid waste to Steelhouse a decade ago – and more than any other headliner, fundamentally got what we were trying to do as an independent rock festival – we hoped that perhaps he would one day return with the band he made his name with… In our 15th year and their 50th, this is coming to pass… Twisted Sister on The Mountain is going to be huge!”

Other bands confirmed for Steelhouse 2026 include The Temperance Movement, plus Reef, Alien Ant Farm, Tyketto, Von Hertzen Brothers, Darren Wharton’s Renegade, Mason Hill, Dan Byrne, Luke Morley, Anthony Gomes, King Kraken, Blue Nation and more.

Twisted Sister have only played one live show since 2016, when they temporarily reunited for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2023.

But they announced in September that they would be heading back out on tour.

At the time, the band revealed that their line-up had changed, as longtime bassist Mark Mendoza won’t be on the tour.

Instead, Russell Pzütto, who has played with the band in the past, will be joining for the new shows.

They are going back on tour to celebrate a HUGE milestone in the band’s long career.

“If you’re lucky enough to be in a band that people still want to see after fifty years(!), how can you not answer the call?” lead singer Dee teased.

“In 2026, Twisted F***ing Sister will hit stages around the world because WE STILL WANNA ROCK!!”