Hundreds of people in Egypt are stung by scorpions after heavy rains. The storm was “absolutely extraordinary,” says one expert.
Assaun / Cairo – After heavy rains in Egypt, more than 500 people were stung by scorpions. In the southern city of Aswan (population around 280,000), heavy rain drove many scorpions and snakes out of their hiding places, reported the state news website Al-Ahram.
Scorpions stung 500 people who received antidotes, said Egypt’s Minister of Education and Research, Chalid Abdel Gaffar, according to a statement on Saturday (November 13, 2021). Hospitals and medical facilities in the desert are adequately supplied with antidotes.
Scorpion stings after storms in Egypt: deaths denied
The news channel Sky News and other media had reported three deaths in connection with the scorpion stings in Egypt. Chalid Abdel Gaffar, however, denied these reports.
Aswan is located on the Nile in Upper Egypt and is known for its two dams and archaeological sites. The city is also very popular with tourists. Usually it hardly ever rains there. With the rain since Friday (November 12th, 2021), light poles and trees have overturned. In addition, shipping traffic on the Nile and Lake Nasser was temporarily interrupted.
500 people stung by scorpions in Egypt: storms “absolutely extraordinary”
Videos that are distributed via social networks are intended to show the force of the storm: lightning strikes the city, large hailstones fall from the sky, people are in an uproar and are getting to safety. Whether all the recordings, some of which were published on the short message service Twitter, actually come from Assaun cannot be definitively verified.
#Egypt : Health official in Aswan has told BBC that the heavy thunder & hail storm there washed scorpions into the streets & people’s homes – causing 400 people to be stung – in the rains scorpions seek refuge anywhere they can… #أسوان #مِصر
pic.twitter.com/zGbWzTNMQn— sebastian usher (@sebusher) November 13, 2021
The moderator and weather expert Björn Alexander said on RTL: “Most recently, the weather stations in southern Europe and northern Africa reported 20 to 40, in some places even over 100 liters of rain per square meter. And parts of Egypt were also hit by heavy storms with heavy rain. ”For Aswan and the area around the city, such severe weather events are“ absolutely extraordinary ”.
In September, the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul was hit by a violent storm. Numerous lightning bolts struck the metropolis in the middle of the night. (tvd / dpa)
