An estimated 130,000 people protested in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia, calling for the resignation of the regional president for what has been described as the chaotic response to the recent floods that devastated the area, leaving more than 200 dead.
A group of protesters clashed with riot police outside Valencia's city hall as the crowd called for the resignation of Carlos Mazon, after his administration was accused of failing to send warning texts to mobile phones ahead of the flooding.
Marchers chanted “Mazon resign” and carried placards with messages such as “You Killed Us!”, while groups of demonstrators threw mud at the walls of the city hall. Mr Mazon said that while he respected the marchers, “there will be time to hold officials accountable” but now “is time to keep cleaning our streets, helping people and rebuilding".
The death toll from the floods stood at 220 on Saturday, 212 of whom were recorded in the Valencia region, as the search for more bodies goes on. Thousands lost their homes in the deluge and streets are still covered in mud and debris more than 11 days after the floodwater hit.
Mr Mazon said the magnitude of the disaster was unforeseeable and his officials had not received sufficient warnings from central authorities. However, Spain’s weather agency issued a red alert, the highest level of warning, for bad weather as early as 7.30am on Tuesday, October 29. Some communities were severely flooded by 6pm later that day but it took until after 8pm for the Mazon administration to send alerts to people’s phones.
In addition, Mr Mazon, who represents the conservative Popular Party, is accused of being too slow to respond effectively once the floodwater started to swamp towns in the region. It took days for officials to organise the thousands of police reinforcements and soldiers that were needed. In Spain, civil protection comes under the auspices of local authorities, who can ask the national government in the capital Madrid for extra resources and assistance.
'Shameful'
Sara Sanchez Gurillo marched on Saturday in protest over losing her 62-year-old brother-in-law, Candido Molina Pulgarin. She told the Associated Press his body was found in a field of orange trees after he was trapped by the water in his home in the town of Cheste, west of Valencia.
“It’s shameful what has happened,” she said. “They knew that the sky was going to fall and yet they didn’t warn anyone. They didn’t evacuate the people. We want them to resign!
“The central government should have taken charge. They should have sent in the army earlier. The king should have made them send it in. Why do we want him as a symbolic figure? He is worthless. The people are alone. They have abandoned us.”
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
