Moscow, Russia – Concentration of carbon monoxide in Moscow’s air has abated, however may slightly increase in the evening, an expert from the State Environmental Protection Organization Mosekomonitoring said on Tuesday.

“Currently, the concentration of carbon monoxide in Moscow is within the norm,” she said.

Rain in several of Moscow’s districts has helped disperse the smog that has been suffocating Muscovites over the last few days.

“But there is a probability that the concentration of harmful substances will slightly rise by evening,” she added.

Beijing – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Sunday toured an area in northwest China wracked by an avalanche of rain and mud that killed at least 127 people and left another 2,000 missing – the latest disaster in a summer season that has brought the nation’s worst flooding in a decade.

Wen’s visit came as rescue teams franticly searched flooded homes for survivors in rain-swollen Zhouqu County in the nation’s northwestern Gansu Province.

A torrential downpour began late Saturday in the province’s Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, an area dominated by steep and barren terrain. Most of the area’s 135,000 residents are ethnic Tibetan herders and farmers.

Shortly after midnight, as residents slept, mountains of mud struck the area, smashing a small power station and wreaking havoc as the Bailong River overflowed its banks.

Half the county was left underwater and one village of 300 homes was literally "buried" under mud and debris, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Peng Wei, head of the county’s fire department told reporters that "the county was in a valley and the river runs in the middle."

State-run television Sunday estimated that 50,000 people had been evacuated. Nearly 3,000 troops and 100 medical workers were converging on the scene, while helicopters surveyed the damage, officials said.

"Now the sludge has become the biggest problem to rescue operations," one local official told Xinhua. "It’s too thick to walk or drive through."

Li Tiankui, a resident who lives near the Bailong River, also told the news agency: "Someone said the fifth floor of my residential building had been submerged. People are busy looking for family members and friends."

So far this year, 1,100 people have been killed and more than 600 have gone missing amid floods that have caused tens of billions of dollars in damage across 28 provinces and regions. Overall, some 875,000 homes have been destroyed with more than 9 million residents evacuated.

Record-high rains have raised rivers in numerous regions to perilously high levels, including the fast-flowing Yangtze River. Floodwaters filled the reservoir at the massive Three Gorges Dam to dangerous levels, officials said.

Elsewhere, some 40 large and medium-sized reservoirs in northeast China were near capacity. Officials are investigating the breaching of a reservoir that killed 40 residents in five downstream communities.

On Sunday, state-run TV showed images from Zhouqu County, where cavalcades of mud several-feet deep flowed down the town’s streets, sweeping along cars, uprooted trees and other debris. The coverage showed one boy being pulled from a ruined house.

Terrified residents fled to high ground or upper stories of apartment buildings. Power, water and communications were cut in flooded areas.

The medical team had been providing eye care to villagers in a remote area of northern Afghanistan. Insurgents claim responsibility for one of the worst attacks on civilians in the war.

Kabul, Afghanistan – Taliban fighters ambushed and killed a 10-member medical team, including six Americans, as they were returning from a trip to a remote northern area to provide eye care to rural villagers, their aid organization and local officials said Saturday. 

The 10 charity workers, who also included two Afghans, a German and a Briton, were found slain in a remote forested area of Badakhshan province, according to provincial police and the International Assistance Mission, the Kabul-based group that organized the trip.

The Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the deaths, claiming those killed were spies and preachers of Christianity. The details provided in statements by spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid suggested that the killers were in fact insurgents and not bandits, who also roam freely in the area.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul could not confirm the nationalities of the six who were listed by the group as Americans, but spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said there was "reason to believe that several American citizens are among the deceased."

The charity’s executive director, Dirk Frans, said it was still awaiting positive identification of the bodies, but that the police description matched that of its workers and their vehicles. Three of the team members were women, he said.

The attack was one of the deadliest strikes against foreign aid workers in the course of the Afghan war. It also represented the largest toll in a single episode for American civilians working in Afghanistan since a suicide bomber killed seven members of a CIA team at a base in eastern Afghanistan in December.

The deaths also pointed up the growing dangers faced by foreign aid organizations, which are regarded by the Taliban as collaborators with the Western military. Last month, gunmen and suicide bombers in June stormed the offices of the U.S.-based development group DAI in Kunduz province, also in Afghanistan’s north, killing at least five people.

The police chief in Badakhshan, Gen. Agha Nur Kamtuz, said villagers told police that the International Assistance Mission workers had been in the area for about two weeks, moving between there and neighboring Nuristan province. Heavy fighting has been taking place over the last month in parts of Nuristan between insurgents and Afghan security forces backed by Western troops.

"People told them it was dangerous," Kamtuz said. "They said they were doctors … and no one had anything against them."

Villagers alerted authorities after they found three bullet-ridden vehicles that belonged to the group in the forest, the police chief said.

Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said insurgents encountered the group in the Kiran Munjan district of Badakhshan and tried to arrest them on suspicion of spying. "But they tried to escape, then mujahedeen attacked and killed all of them on the spot," he said by telephone.

The International Assistance Mission, which has been working in Afghanistan since 1966, describes itself as a charitable nonprofit Christian organization. One of its major projects is a chain of eye hospitals and clinics.

In a statement posted on its website, the group condemned "this senseless killing of people who have done nothing but serve the poor."

The charity’s medical team was led by Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, N.Y., who had been with the organization since its early days, Frans said. The group’s website says its expatriate workers are volunteers.

Two school buses carrying high school band members crashed into a tractor trailer cab and a pickup truck on a highway east of St. Louis on Thursday, leaving more than 40 people injured and two dead.

Graphic images from the scene near Gray Summit, Mo., showed the first bus mangled and suspended at a jarring angle into the front part of the cab and the second bus jammed behind it, while fire-extinguishing material littered Interstate 44. The highway was closed for hours.

The accident occurred at about 10:15 a.m. Central time, the authorities said.

Capt. Jay T. Hull, a spokesman for the Missouri Highway Patrol, confirmed that one student had died. He added that the injuries ranged from “very minor to more moderate.”

The tractor trailer cab, which did not have a trailer, was going east and slowing for construction when it was rear-ended by another vehicle and then the two buses, according to Tim Laske, the president of Climate Express trucking company and owner of the vehicle.

“There’s obviously a concern for the injured kids and the other people,” he said in an interview. He said that his driver had been injured and taken to an area hospital, but his injuries were likely not serious.

Band members from the John F. Hodge High School in St. James, Mo., were going to the Six Flags amusement park in Eureka, about 10 miles east of where the accident occurred. The first bus carried the female band members, according to reports, with boys were in the second. State Highway Patrol Corporal Jeff Wilson told The Post-Dispatch that a female student and one driver had died.

By 1 p.m., 35 of the students were taken to SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in St. Louis.

“They arrived via a large charter bus and were brought in through our ambulance entrance,” the hospital spokesman Bob Davidson said. “They all appear to be walking, they are a little shaken up. Although they have not been evaluated, they seem to look pretty good.”

Jordan – Rockets from Egypt’s Sinai, where Islamist militants have operated in the past, hit Israel’s and Jordan’s Red Sea port resorts on Monday, killing a Jordanian civilian and injuring three others, Jordanian and Israeli police said.

A Jordanian interior ministry source said one of the four injured when a rocket exploded near a five-star hotel in Aqaba, later died from his injuries.
There was no word of casualties in the adjacent Israeli port and holiday resort of Eilat, police said. Aqaba and Eilat lie on the narrow northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, an extension of the Red Sea, with Sinai stretching west and south of Eilat.

Jordanian Minister of State Ali al-Ayed said the kingdom would continue its "fight against terrorists who undertake callous attacks that targets innocent people."

Israeli President Shimon Peres condemned the rocket fire and said Israel and Jordan, who made peace in 1994, were "partners in the uncompromising struggle to eradicate terrorism." "There is a real struggle in the Middle East between the peace camp of moderate countries and the camp of extremists, who want to sabotage any chance for peace," Peres said.

Asked where the Aqaba rocket was fired from, the Jordanian source said without elaborating: "It came from the west." Experts were investigating the site to find out where the short-range rocket had been launched, he said.

Egyptian security sources were quoted by the state news agency as saying rockets could not have been fired from Sinai since the largely empty, desert region was very mountainous.

"The only missiles that can be fired from Sinai are mortars which can pass over these heights," General Abdel Fadeel Shousha, governor of South Sinai, said adding the area such an operation would require open space.

Aqaba resident Ibrahim Salymehin said he heard one loud blast and when he arrived at the scene he saw at least three injured men taken to a nearby hospital by ambulance.

A crowd gathered near the scene of the explosion several hundred meters away from a five-star hotel close to the beach.

"We saw the wreckage of a taxi which was burned, and fragmented metal scattered around the area that was cordoned off by police," another Aqaba resident, Abdullah Yashin Rawashdehd, told.

Eilat District Police Commander Moshe Cohen told Israel Radio that his forces were still trying to confirm that five explosions heard in the morning had been caused by shelling.

Two of the suspected rockets or mortar bombs appeared to have landed in the sea, while another hit Aqaba, he said.

"It’s a little early to say, but it is reasonable to assume that it came from the southern area," he said, referring to neighboring Egypt, whose Sinai Peninsula has suffered occasional violence attributed to Islamist militants.

A police spokesman later said the remains of one rocket was found in Eilat and was being examined by bomb experts.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

At least one rocket struck Aqaba on April 22, causing no casualties. Amman said the rocket had been fired from outside Jordan and Israeli media said Sinai was a possible launch point.

In 2005, rockets were fired at U.S. warships in Aqaba but missed their target and killed a Jordanian soldier on land. A group claiming links to al Qaeda said it was behind the attack.

Two years later, a Palestinian suicide bomber infiltrated through Sinai and killed three people at a bakery in Eilat, which lies on Israel’s southern tip and has only rarely been touched by the Middle East conflict.

Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab states to have full peace treaties with Israel. Those relations were frayed by Israel’s crackdown in 2000 on a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

VORONEZH, Russia – Hundreds of new fires broke out Sunday in Russian forests and fields that have been dried to a crisp by drought and record heat. Firefighters brought some of the wildfires raging around cities under control, getting much-needed help from residents desperate to save their homes, who shoveled sand onto the flames and carted water in large plastic bottles.

The wildfires that began threatening much of western Russia last week have killed 28 people and destroyed or damaged 77 towns or villages, the Emergencies Ministry said. Thousands of people have been evacuated from areas in the path of flames, but no deaths have been recorded since late Wednesday.

Army troops and volunteers have joined more than 22,000 firefighters in combating the fires, which blazed just outside Moscow and in several provinces east and south of the capital.

The region around Voronezh, a city of 850,000 people about 300 miles (475 kilometers) south of Moscow, has been one of the worst hit. Half of the 300 homes in the village of Maslovka were reduced to cinders.

Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman Yelena Chernova said fires in the Voronezh region were under control Sunday and no longer threatened any population centers.

But woodlands on the edge of the city, about a mile (1.5 kilometers) from some houses, continued to burn. Firefighters dumped water on the blaze from the air, while local residents pitched in on the ground.

New fires were breaking out elsewhere in Russia. Of the 774 fires burning Sunday, 369 had started in the past 24 hours. More than 300,000 acres (128,000 hectares) were ablaze, including in the regions around Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s fifth-largest city, and the city of Ryazan, just southeast of Moscow. The fires also were intensifying in regions farther to the east such as Mordovia and Tatarstan.

Smokey air has settled over cities, already baking in the heat, and many residents complain of headaches and intestinal ailments. In Moscow, the smog has come mainly from fires in dried-up peat bogs in outlying regions. The peat, which is high in carbon, can ignite and smolder underground, giving off dangerous fumes.

Much of western and central Russia is suffering through a severe drought, thought to be the worst since 1972, in what has been the hottest summer since record-keeping began 130 years ago. This year’s harvest was already in trouble, and the fires have finished off vast fields of golden wheat and other crops.

Temperatures have topped 95 degrees (35 Celsius) for much of the past three weeks, with an all-time high of close to 100 degrees (38 Celsius) recorded in Moscow last week.

Emergency officials said the heat and drought were the main cause of the fires, but they also blamed human carelessness and urged people to use extreme caution when walking or driving in the woods or countryside.

"Any source of fire, including a cigarette thrown from a car window, will ignite the dried grass," the emergency services said in a statement.

NOWSHERA, Pakistan – The death toll from massive flooding in Pakistan surged past 800 in Saturday and could reach into the thousands in coming days as floodwaters recede in the hard-hit northwest, authorities said.

"The death toll could go as high as 3,000 because the level of destruction has been so great," Mujahid Khan, chief spokesman for Pakistan’s largest rescue service, said by telephone from Peshawar.

Saturday afternoon, 817 people had been confirmed dead, he said. In neighboring eastern Afghanistan, 64 others were reported dead.

The damage to roads, bridges and communications networks was hindering rescuers, while the threat of disease loomed as some evacuees arrived in camps with fever, diarrhea and skin problems.

Even for a country used to tragedy, the scale of this past week’s flooding has been shocking. Monsoon rains come every year, but rarely with such fury.

Compounding the tragedy was the country’s worst-ever plane crash, caused by heavy rains, which killed 152 people in Islamabad on Wednesday.

As waterways swelled in Pakistan’s northwest, people sought ever-shrinking high ground or grasped for trees and fences to avoid getting swept away as buildings crumbled into raging rivers.

The United Nations estimated that 1 million people across Pakistan were affected in some way by the disaster.

More than 30,000 Pakistani army troops had evacuated 19,000 trapped people by Saturday night, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas.

"The level of devastation is so widespread, so large," he said. "It is quite possible that in many areas there is damage, deaths, which may not have been reported."

In the Nowshera area, men, women and children sat on roofs in hopes of air or boat rescues. Many had little more than the clothes on their backs.

"There are very bad conditions," said Amjad Ali, a rescue worker in the area. "They have no water, no food."

In the town of Charsadda, Nabi Gul looked at a pile of rubble where his house once stood.

"I built this house with my life’s earnings and hard work, and the river has washed it away," he said. "Now I wonder, will I be able to rebuild it?"

The blaze in northern L.A. County has forced the evacuation of 300 homes. Wind gusts of up to 50 mph were making the fight difficult. The governor visited the site Friday. Firefighters launched an aerial assault Friday as part of a stepped-up campaign to tame a wind-driven wildfire that has consumed more than 13,000 acres in Los Angeles County’s High Desert, threatening hundreds of homes.

The Crown fire forced the evacuation of 300 homes and destroyed several structures. At one point, the fire jumped the California Aqueduct and was bearing down on homes in the Rancho Vista subdivision in western Palmdale but was quickly diverted. More than 1,700 fighters, assisted by five water-dropping helicopters and a DC-10 aircraft, used to drop fire retardant, helped bring the Leona Valley fire to 20% containment by late Friday, officials said. A 747 tanker was also deployed to help battle the blaze.

"Public safety is our No. 1 priority, and the faster we jump into action the better it is," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told reporters after being briefed by fire officials during a visit to the site. "We are deploying everything that we’ve got." Schwarzenegger said several fires were raging around the state and that a total of 30,000 acres had been burned so far and 34 structures destroyed. In L.A. County, the Briggs fire, which burned more than 350 acres south of the 14 Freeway at Indian Canyon Truck Trail and Briggs Road, had been brought under control by Friday. A third fire near Gorman burned about 30 acres Thursday before it was extinguished.

In neighboring Kern County, cooler temperatures helped firefighters contain two wildfires that had burned more than 17,000 acres and destroyed dozens of structures in remote mountain communities earlier in the week.

Fire officials said their strategy on the Crown fire, which broke out late Thursday afternoon, was to contain the fire and keep it from spreading but that winds gusts of up to 50 mph were making it difficult. The air was bone dry, and temperatures had soared into the high 90s. "It is very difficult to limit growth when Mother Nature is not cooperating," said Deputy Chief Michael Bryant of the L.A. County Fire Department.

Three trailers, a single-family home and two garages were destroyed on the Lazy T Ranch in the Leona Valley, fire officials said. Near Lake Elizabeth Road, one house had roof damage, and three out-buildings and a hay barn were destroyed. Residents of a housing development on Elizabeth Lake Road were being asked to stay put as firefighters formed a containment perimeter around them, authorities said.

A top priority for firefighters was to protect power lines throughout the area that bring electricity to much of Southern California, Bryant said. He noted that some communication infrastructure, such as antennas and electronic repeater dishes, had been damaged, but this had not hampered the communication capabilities for battling the blaze, he said.

The L.A. Department of Water and Power requested that residents reduce their energy usage wherever possible. "We’re asking people to help care for our infrastructure while this fire is burning, as we wait for the potential threat to diminish," said Brooks Baker, a spokesman for the agency.

Officials said the agency minimized power imports Friday on a transmission line that passes through the Leona Valley and began generating power at closer power plants to deliver energy to the city. Brooks said there were no fire-related outages Friday. A small number of Southern California Edison customers were less lucky.

With "multiple" transmission and distribution lines threatened, Edison officials said 21 customers were without service in Lancaster, most of them south of Elizabeth Lake Road. Those customers had been without power since late Thursday afternoon, and it was unclear when service would be restored.

The cause of the Crown fire has not been determined. But the investigation into its origin focuses on a vacant lot where workers were apparently using a hammer to extract bolts from tire rims, according to Bryant. No illegal activity appeared to be involved, and workers involved were cooperating with fire and law enforcement officials, he said.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Three U.S. troops died in blasts in Afghanistan, bringing the death toll for July to at least 63 and surpassing the previous month’s record as the deadliest for American forces in the nearly 9-year-old war. In Kabul, police fired weapons into the air Friday to disperse a crowd of angry Afghans who shouted "death to America," hurled stones and set fire to two vehicles after an SUV was involved in a traffic accident that killed four Afghans on the main airport road, according to the capital’s criminal investigations chief, Abdul Ghaafar Sayedzada.

SUVs often are associated with foreigners, but it remained unclear who caused the accident because the occupants fled the scene. Afghan police, some carrying riot shields, converged on the area, firing warning shots into the air to disperse the protesters. Sayedzada said the crowd burned two foreigners’ vehicles, causing heavy black smoke to rise from the scene. "It is our right to raise up our voice and protest when innocent Afghans are harmed," said Azizullah, a 25-year-old student, who like many Afghans uses one name.

He said foreigners were in the vehicle that struck the car, killing the Afghan civilians. Ahmad Jawid, who also was at the scene, asked: "Are we not Muslims? Are we not from Afghanistan? Infidels are here and they are ruling us. Why?" A fatal traffic accident caused by a U.S. military convoy in 2006 triggered an anti-American riot in Kabul that left at least 14 people dead and dozens injured.

The three U.S. service members died in two separate blasts in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, a NATO statement said Friday. It gave no nationalities, but U.S. officials said all three were Americans. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity pending notification of kin. U.S. and NATO commanders had warned casualties would rise as the international military force ramps up the war against the Taliban, especially in their southern strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces. President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan last December in a bid to turn back a resurgent Taliban.

British and Afghan troops launched a new offensive Friday in the Sayedebad area of Helmand to try to deny insurgents a base from which to launch attacks in Nad Ali and Marjah, the British military announced. Coalition and Afghan troops have sought to solidify control of Marjah after overrunning the poppy-farming community five months ago. In Kabul, a crowd threw stones and set fire to an SUV after a traffic accident Friday in which two Afghans were killed and two were injured, according to traffic official Abdul Saboor. SUVs are associated with foreigners, but Saboor said the occupants of the vehicle fled the scene.

The tally of 63 American service member deaths in July is based on military reports compiled by The Associated Press. June had been the deadliest month for both the U.S. and the overall NATO-led force. A total of 104 international service members died last month, including 60 Americans. The American deaths this month include Petty Officer 2nd Class Justin McNeley from Kingman, Arizona, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Jarod Newlove, 25, from the Seattle area. They went missing last week in Logar province south of Kabul, and the Taliban announced they were holding one of the sailors.

McNeley’s body was recovered there Sunday, and Newlove’s body was pulled from a river Wednesday evening, Afghan officials said. The Taliban offered no explanation for Newlove’s death, but Afghan officials speculated he died of wounds suffered when the two were ambushed by the Taliban. The discovery of Newlove’s body only deepened the mystery of the men’s disappearance nearly 60 miles (100 kilometers) from their base in Kabul. An investigation is under way, but with both sailors dead, U.S. authorities remain at a loss to explain what two junior enlisted men in noncombat jobs were doing driving alone in Logar — much of which is not under government control.

Newlove’s father, Joseph Newlove, told KOMO-TV in Seattle he too was baffled why his son had left the relative safety of Kabul. "He’s never been out of that town. So why would he go out of that town? He wouldn’t have," he said. Senior military officials in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the sailors were never assigned anywhere near where their bodies were found.

A NATO official in Kabul shot down speculation the two were abducted in Kabul and driven to Logar — the same province where New York Times reporter David Rohde was kidnapped in 2008 while trying to make contact with a Taliban commander. Rohde and an Afghan colleague escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity, most spent in Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. Elsewhere, violence continued Friday.

Four Afghan civilians were killed and three were injured when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Zabul province of southern Afghanistan, provincial spokesman Mohammed Jan Rasoolyar said. When police arrived at the scene, Taliban fighters opened fire. One insurgent was killed, the spokesman said.

In Kandahar, a candidate in September’s parliamentary election escaped assassination Friday when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded, city security chief Fazil Ahmad Sherzad said. The Interior Ministry said a woman and a child were killed and another child was wounded.

BREAKING NEWS – 3 more US troops die in southern Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Three more U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan, bringing the U.S. death toll for July to at least 66 and making it the deadliest month for American forces in the nearly 9-year-war.

A NATO statement Friday said one service member died following an insurgent attack and two others were killed in a roadside bombing the same day in southern Afghanistan. A U.S military official confirmed all three were American troops. Earlier in the day, a U.S. military official confirmed three other American service members died in two separate blasts in southern Afghanistan on Thursday. The six deaths raised the U.S. death toll for the month to at least 66, according to an Associated Press count. June had been the deadliest month for the U.S. with 60 deaths.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – The death toll in three days of flooding in Pakistan reached at least 267 on Friday, rescue and government officials said, as rains bloated rivers, submerged villages, and triggered landslides. The rising toll of the monsoon rains underscore the poor infrastructure in impoverished Pakistan, where under-equipped rescue workers were struggling to reach people stranded in far-flung villages.

Pakistani TV showed striking images of people clinging to fences and other stationary items as water at times gushed over their heads. The northwest appeared to be the hardest hit, and Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for the province, said it was the worst flooding in the region since 1929.

At least 245 people died in various parts of that province over the last three days, said Mujahid Khan of the Edhi Foundation, a privately run rescue service that operates morgues and ambulances across the South Asian country.

In Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, at least 22 people had been confirmed dead as of Thursday evening, the area’s prime minister, Sardar Attique Khan, told reporters.

The tolls from the deluge were expected to rise because many people were still missing. Poor weather this week also may have been a factor in Wednesday’s Airblue plane crash that killed 152 people in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. In the Swat Valley, residents were forced to trudge through knee-deep water in some streets.

A newly constructed part of a dam in the Charsadda district collapsed, while the U.N. said it had reports that 5,000 homes were underwater in that area. Hussain estimated 400,000 people were stranded in various northwest villages.

"A rescue operation using helicopters cannot be conducted due to the bad weather, while there are only 48 rescue boats available for rescue," he said on Thursday.

Pakistan’s poorest residents are often the ones living in flood-prone areas because they can’t afford safer land.

Southwest Baluchistan province has also been hit hard by the recent rains. Last week, flash floods in that region killed at least 41 people and swept away thousands of homes. The U.N. statement Thursday said 150,000 people were affected there.

The U.N. said Punjab province in Pakistan’s east was also hit by some flooding. Crops were soaked in farmlands throughout the country. The U.N. said the humanitarian community was trying to put together a proper response, but the rains were making many roads impassable, complicating efforts to assess needs.