RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories —Abnormal storms which for four days have blasted the Middle East with rain, snow and hail have left dozens of people dead and brought misery to Syrian refugees huddled in camps. In the latest incidents, officials reported that two women were found dead in the West Bank on Wednesday after their car was swept away in floods, while a 30-year-old man froze to death in Taalabaya, in Lebanon's Bekaa province, after he fell asleep drunk in his car. The eavy winter downpours have turned some Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank into a morass of filth and flooding as an Israeli barrier blocks the waters from draining away. In Qalqilya, a town of 42,000 in the northern West Bank almost completely surrounded by the concrete wall, Khaled Kandeel and his family huddled by an open fire in a shed as trash-laden water swelled through his pear orchard. The winter storm has hit the eastern Mediterranean this week, bringing destruction and death to Syria and its neighbors who are already dealing with a refugee crisis from the country's civil war. Opposition activists in Syria, where war has forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and cut off access to food, fuel and power for cities and towns, say dozens of people have died there in four days of relentless extreme weather. Meteorological agencies in Israel and Lebanon both called it the worst storm in 20 years. Snow carpeted Syria's war-torn cities but sparked no let-up in the fighting, instead heaping fresh misery on a civilian population already enduring a chronic shortage of heating fuel and daily power cuts. The unusual weather was a particularly harsh blow for the vulnerable Syrian refugees, especially about 50,000 sheltering in the Zaatari tent camp in Jordan's northern desert. Torrential rains over the past four days have flooded 200 tents and forced women and infants to evacuate in temperatures below freezing at night, whipping wind and lashing rain. The rare, heavy snowfall blocked all streets in Jordan's capital, Amman, and isolated remote villages, prompting warnings from authorities for people to stay home as snow ploughs tried to reopen clogged roads. The country's Meteorology Department said the storm, accompanied by lashing wind, lightning and thunder, dumped the most snow in northern regions and some parts of usually arid southern Jordan. In Egypt, torrential rains, strong winds and low visibility disrupted Suez Canal operations over the past three days and also closed down several ports. The number of ships moving through the Suez Canal dropped by half because of poor visibility, the official MENA news agency reported. A canal official said that by Wednesday, operations had returned to normal. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters. With snow falling in the West Bank city of Ramallah, wintry weather was also forecast for Amman and Jerusalem, and the polar air mass moving down from Russia sent temperatures plummeting as far south as Cairo. Torrential rain since Sunday in a region unaccustomed to such deluges has sparked widespread flooding that has led to school closures, transport chaos and helicopter evacuations from homes and cars. — Agencies
