{"id":51778,"date":"2024-05-04T18:53:21","date_gmt":"2024-05-04T08:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abnews.com.au\/?p=51778"},"modified":"2024-05-04T18:53:21","modified_gmt":"2024-05-04T08:53:21","slug":"iraq-rainstorm-flooding-kills-hikers-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/?p=51778","title":{"rendered":"Iraq rainstorm flooding kills hikers: officials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Floods caused by torrential rainstorms killed four hikers in the Sulaimaniyah region of northern Iraq on Friday, local officials told AFP.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Four members of a hiking team drowned because of heavy rains and flooding in Awaspi village&#8221; in Qaradah district, local official Rouf Kamal said.<\/p>\n<p>Civil defence spokesperson Aram Ali confirmed the toll, and said eight other hikers survived the incident south of Sulaimaniyah, the autonomous Kurdistan region&#8217;s second city.<\/p>\n<p>He said a weather warning had been issued on Thursday, with hikers in particular urged to avoid mountainous areas.<\/p>\n<p>Heavier than usual rainfall has caused flooding in several parts of Iraq, especially the north, and some roads in Kurdistan region capital Arbil were blocked.<\/p>\n<p>Iraq has suffered four consecutive years of drought, with irregular rainfall badly affecting water resources, forcing many farmers to abandon their land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Floods caused by torrential rainstorms killed four hikers in the Sulaimaniyah region of northern Iraq on Friday, local officials told AFP. &#8220;Four members of a hiking team drowned because of heavy rains and flooding in Awaspi village&#8221; in Qaradah district, local official Rouf Kamal said. Civil defence spokesperson Aram Ali confirmed the toll, and said [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1382],"class_list":["post-51778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","tag-iraq-rainstorm-flooding-kills-hikers-officials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}