Official: 290,000 Flooded People Receive Emergency Accommodation in Iran

“290,000 people have been sheltered in emergency camps and 602,000 people received relief and rescue aid in over 3,400 villages, towns and cities,” Salimi said on Saturday.

He added that 8,345 people have also been transferred to safe areas through efforts of rescue workers and helicopters.

Meantime, the Deputy Head of Iran’s Welfare Organization Habibollah Farid told FNA on Saturday that 70 temporary kindergartens have been set up in flood-stricken areas, adding that nearly 400 relief teams are stationed in the three province of Khuzestan, Golestan and Lorestan.

Also, Representative of Iran’s Jewish Society at the parliament Siamak Mareh Sedq told FNA that the Iranian Jews and synagogues are prepared to help reconstruction of houses destroyed in the floods.

Meantime, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited the flooded Western province of Lorestan on Saturday.

During a meeting with the local officials in the province, he entrusted the interior minister with supervising reconstruction of the flood-hit areas, vowing to compensate for the damages inflicted on people by the floods.

Rouhani also said that a reconstruction base will be set up to rebuild the houses ruined in the recent floods in Poldokhtar city in Lorestan province.

In a related front on Saturday, Caretaker of the Governor’s Office in Dezfoul city in the Southern province of Khuzestan Mohammad Heidari said that residents of villages which had been evacuated have returned to their homes after the flood receded, adding that the accommodation camps are now empty.

Unprecedented rainfalls since March 19 triggered disastrous floods in Iran. The tragedy started in the four Northern provinces of Mazandaran, Golestan, Semnan and North Khorassan on March 20. Thirty provinces of Iran have been hit by severe weather conditions since then.

Earlier this month, the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) announced that Tehran had not been able to receive any foreign financial aid because of Washington’s “inhuman” sanctions against the country.

“No foreign cash donation has been made to the Iranian Red Crescent Society yet and basically there are no financial channels available to do this,” the IRCS said in a statement on April 7.

“Some institutions and countries have expressed their readiness to donate and also declared certain sums of money; but as a result of the inhuman US sanctions, there is no way to send this cash assistance” to Iran, the statement added.

The IRCS emphasized in another part of its statement that despite US officials’ claims, Washington’s sanctions have caused difficulties in the way of helping people affected by flooding and influenced logistical capacities, particularly air relief.

The IRCS has not been able to buy new aid helicopters due to the unilateral sanctions imposed by the US and is also facing difficulties for buying spare parts to maintain its existing aid helicopter fleet, the statement added.

Official accounts are confirming that so far 76 lives have been claimed by the recent floods in Iran, while hundreds of thousands have been left homeless.