Twelve people have been killed in a flood disaster in the European country of Georgia, including three workers at a zoo where several animals escaped.
One of those animals was a hippo, which was cornered in one of Tbilisi's main squares, but it was subdued with a tranquilizer gun, the zoo said. It wasn't immediately clear how many animals escaped when their enclosures were destroyed by the floods, but residents were warned Sunday to stay inside as a precaution.
It's not believed that any of the fatalities were due to animal attacks, and photos from the zoo showed deaths to a lion, bear and fox when the flooding overtook their dwellings. The zoo said Guliko Chitadze, a zookeeper who lost an arm in a tiger attack last month, was among the three people killed there.
Heavy rains and wind hit Tbilisi during the night, turning a normally small stream that runs through the hilly city into a surging river. The flooding also damaged dozens of houses.
"Slow-moving low pressure aloft centered over northern Turkey pumped at least double the average atmospheric moisture for mid-June into Georgia this weekend," said weather.com meteorologist Jon Erdman. "This set the stage for slow-moving areas of heavy rain in the nation's capital."
City mayor David Narmania told journalists that 12 people were known to have died.
Helicopters are circling the city and residents have been told to stay indoors except in an emergency. About 1.1 million people live in the former Soviet republic's capital.
The head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as telling a Sunday Mass that Georgia's former Communist rulers could be seen as involved in the disaster.
"When Communists came to us in this country, they ordered that all crosses and bells of the churches be melted down and the money used to build the zoo," he said. "The sin will not go without punishment. I am very sorry that Georgians fell so that a zoo was built at the expense of destroyed churches."
By : Lika Agladze
