Five killed and homes flooded as storms hit Kirkuk and the Kurdistan Region

ERBIL — Erbil, Kirkuk, Salah al-Din and Dhi Qar will close schools on Sunday after heavy rain from Friday night into Saturday flooded homes, markets and streets in Erbil and Kirkuk. Lightning and a crash on a rain-slicked road killed five people.

Videos obtained by 964media on Saturday evening showed water covering Erbil’s 100-Meter Road and parts of Family Mall. Flash floods ran through streets in the Zilan and Sebardan areas, and large numbers of cars were damaged or under water after hours of almost nonstop rain.

“Because of the heavy rain, several neighborhoods and areas of Erbil city have unfortunately been damaged, and large amounts of water have entered citizens’ homes,” Erbil Governor Omed Khoshnaw said in a statement Saturday night.

Khoshnaw declared Sunday an official holiday at every educational institution, public and private, from kindergartens to universities, to keep residents safe and let government teams carry on working. Department heads may record the day as leave for employees whose homes flooded overnight or who cannot reach work, and service and emergency staff are to stay on alert, the statement said.

The Kurdistan Regional Government’s Electricity Ministry said it would cut power temporarily in neighborhoods where pooled water put lives at risk and restore it once the danger passed. Sulaymaniyah Governor Haval Abubakir phoned Khoshnaw to offer his governorate’s help, the Sulaymaniyah governorate said.

Kirkuk governorate closed only schools and kindergartens for Sunday, citing water resources and weather reports that the low-pressure system would keep affecting the area. It urged residents along the Little Zab River and in areas hit by flash floods to stay away from them, and told drivers to take care on highways.

The Dhi Qar Provincial Council closed all schools in the governorate for Sunday because of bad weather, but the Dhi Qar Education Directorate and all other state offices will work as normal, its spokesperson, Ahmed Salim al-Ibrahimi, said. Salah al-Din Governor Haitham al-Zahwan ordered schools across the governorate closed on Sunday, along with government offices and schools in Samarra district, his office said.

Chamchamal’s district authorities closed all schools under the district’s education directorate for Sunday and moved the day’s exams to the following day. The KRG Education Ministry said that, as in past years, it has given governorates and autonomous administrations the power to close schools in bad weather. In Baghdad, Education Minister Abdul Karim Abtan told the directors general of education in the governorates to assess conditions and decide whether to close schools hit by floods or at risk from flash floods, his media office said.

Four members of one family were killed before noon Saturday when their Kia Cerato collided with a fuel tanker near the Rashad subdistrict, on the highway between Kirkuk and Salah al-Din governorates. Safin Hussein, an officer at the Salah al-Din traffic police, told 964media about the crash.

“It was a collision, and it happened because of speeding and the road being slippery from the rain,” Hussein said. A 13-year-old girl from the same family was seriously injured, the tanker driver was slightly hurt and traffic teams have opened an investigation, he said. The Kirkuk-Tikrit highway near Rashad has a record of deadly crashes: 10 members of one family were killed there in September 2024.

In Zakho, lightning killed Kifah Hassan Khidr, a 32-year-old livestock trader from Sinjar who lived in a camp for displaced people in the town, at about 11 a.m. at the town’s livestock market. He was already dead when he was brought to Zakho Emergency Hospital, and the body is with the forensic medicine department and will be handed to his family, Amir Ali, a health spokesperson in Zakho, told 964media.

Lightning also struck a border guard post on Hasan Beg mountain in Choman, in the Soran Autonomous Administration, injuring a 23-year-old guard. He is in stable condition at Choman hospital, Choman health director Ahmed Hassan told 964media.

In Qaryatagh, a village in Erbil, water entered more than 40 homes after heavy rain and blocked drains. Resident Rebwar Ahmed told 964media that people managed to save only their families and everything inside their homes was ruined. It is not the first year this has happened, he said, blaming the authorities for not clearing the drains often enough.

In Erbil’s Sheikh Ahmed neighborhood, residents told 964media the water had ruined everything in their homes, and one said it had carried away several cars.

Erbil’s Tayrawa market, where vegetables, fruit and other goods are sold, took in more water than anywhere else at the start of the storm. A trader told 964media that most of his goods and those of fellow traders were soaked or under water. The drains are too small for the water that flows in from the other markets, and repeated requests to fix them have gone nowhere, he said.

In Sheikhalla, one of Erbil’s busiest markets, trader Karim Ismail told 964media that stall holders who concrete their own spots send water under other traders’ stalls, and that the government should pave the whole market at one level. At the back of the market, homes were evacuated two months ago for fear of collapse and the shops have also been emptied, shopkeeper Nasim Abdullah said. The ground there sinks when it rains, and several people have fallen and broken arms and legs, he said.

In Kirkuk’s Rahimawa neighborhood, floodwater poured into homes at about midnight Friday. “Water got into all our rooms, and all the electrical appliances we have burned out and were damaged,” residents told 964media. They blamed poor services and contractors who they said even sell off land in the water’s path.

Kirkuk recorded 29.2 millimeters of rain in 24 hours, the most anywhere in Iraq outside the Kurdistan Region, with the heaviest fall in Rahimawa, according to figures from the Iraqi Meteorological Organization and Seismology.

Adnan Nuradin, an engineer at the Kirkuk sewerage directorate, told 964media that crews cleared the manholes a month ago, but they had filled again with plastic bags, water bottles and other waste. Unauthorized houses have been built in spots that flood every year, such as the Shoraw, Sayada and Panja Ali neighborhoods, and the fix is to remove them or build large drains, which needs money, he said.

In Sulaymaniyah, water backed up through drains, bathrooms and pipes into several homes in the Mala Dawd neighborhood after manholes clogged. Aram Rasool told 964media he rushed his children up to the roof when the water came in at night. “The municipality says it gave the work to a company, and the company says it belongs to the municipality. We don’t know who is responsible for this problem,” he said.

Residents and farmers in Sulaymaniyah still welcomed the rain. Meteorology sources told 964media that the rainfall this autumn compares well with last year’s for the same period.

In Chamchamal, floodwater brought down more than 50 meters of the wall at Nwegari school, which teaches about 900 students in two shifts in the Raparin neighborhood. Another part of the wall collapsed the same way last year, and the school complained, but nothing was done, principal Barzan Mohammed told 964media.

Chamchamal was the town worst hit by floods last December, when flooding in the district killed two people and a KRG investigation later found 1,258 homes damaged.

Rawanduz recorded the most rain in the Soran administration, 50 millimeters, Maqbila Faiq, head of the administration’s meteorology unit, told 964media.

The Kurdistan Region’s meteorology directorate said late Saturday that thunderstorms and downpours would last until dawn in Sulaymaniyah and Halabja governorates and the Garmian administration, with weaker rain in Erbil and Duhok governorates and the Zakho administration. The meteorological organization, whose Saturday forecast had called for heavy thunderstorms with hail in the center and north, expects light to moderate rain on Sunday and relatively stable, clear weather from Monday.