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DENPASAR: Rescuers on Thursday searched in rivers and the rubble of devastated villages for survivors of devastating flash floods that struck two provinces in Indonesia a day earlier, as waters began to recede.
Torrential rains beginning Monday caused flooding and landslides on the tourist island of Bali and in East Nusa Tenggara province, killing at least 15 people and leaving 10 missing.
Rain caused rivers to burst their banks, tearing through nine cities and districts on Bali. Mud, rocks and trees tumbled onto mountainside hamlets and rising rivers submerged at least 112 neighborhoods and resulted in several landslides, Bali’s Disaster Mitigation Agency said in a statement.
As river levels returned to normal on Thursday, people in Denpasar, Bali’s capital, left crammed emergency shelters. They found streets covered in mud and debris, cars lying upside down in parks or piled up in narrow alleys, and sidewalks strewn with sandals, pots and pans and old photographs.
Authorities took advantage of the receding waters to begin clearing away mud and removing piles of wet garbage from the streets, and electricity was restored to tens of thousands of residences and businesses.
Heavy seasonal rain from about September to March frequently causes flooding and landslides in Indonesia.
Suharyanto, the head of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, told a news conference late Wednesday that the threat of flooding in Bali is over.
The floods in Bali swept away people and about 474 kiosks and small shophouses in art and public markets, killing at least six residents and submerging hundreds of houses and buildings, forcing more than 800 residents to flee to temporary government shelters, said Suharyanto, who goes by a single name like many Indonesians.
He said up to 600 rescue workers, police and soldiers have been deployed since Wednesday to search for six people reportedly still missing in Bali as the floods also have damaged roads, bridges and other infrastructures.
Scores of rescue personnel were searching through a river around the remote village of Mauponggo in East Nusa Tenggara, where floods left tons of mud, rocks and trees.
Rescuers were focused on finding four people, including two toddlers, who were swept away by floods along with 35 houses, said local police chief Dewa Putu Suariawan. Six other villagers were pulled out of floodwaters or mud on Wednesday.
Local Disaster Mitigation Agency head Agustinus Pone said the severe weather and rugged terrain that hampered rescue efforts exacerbated by the disruption of electricity, clean water, and telecommunications networks in 18 villages by flash floods.
He said that flooding and landslides in the area also destroyed two bridges, two government offices, a plantation and rice fields, and killed livestock.

The assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk marks a watershed moment in a surge of US political violence, one that some experts fear will inflame an already-fractured country and inspire more unrest.
”This event is horrifying, alarming, but not necessarily surprising,” said Mike Jensen, a researcher at the University of Maryland, which has tracked such violence in a terrorism database since 1970.
In the first six months of the year, the US experienced about 150 politically-motivated attacks — nearly twice as many as over the same period last year, said Jensen. “I think we are in a very, very dangerous spot right now that could quite easily escalate into more widespread civil unrest if we don’t get a hold of it,” Jensen said. “This could absolutely serve as a kind of flashpoint that inspires more of it.”
Experts in domestic terrorism cite a convergence of factors for increased violence in the US: economic insecurity, anxiety over shifting racial and ethnic demographics, and the increasingly inflammatory tone of political discourse. Traditional ideological divides — once centered on policy disagreements — have morphed into a deeper, more personal animosity. That anger is amplified by a mix of social media, conspiracy theories and personal grievances.
Reuters identified last year at least 300 cases of political violence across the US between the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the 2024 presidential election, marking the most significant and sustained surge in such violence since the 1970s.
“Extreme political violence is increasingly becoming the norm in our country, and the shooting of Charlie Kirk is indicative of a far greater and more pervasive issue: acts of violence are becoming more common, even without any clear ideology or motive,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
“There’s really a concern about what the blowback to something like this will look like.”
Other experts who study political violence agreed. “People are reluctant to engage in violence first, but they’re much more willing to engage in violence as retaliation,” said Lilliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University. “No one wants to be the one to start it, but lots of people want to be able to finish it.”
Kirk, a close ally of US President Donald Trump and founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was addressing an outdoor crowd of about 3,000 at Utah Valley University when a gunshot rang out, sending him tumbling from his chair and attendees fleeing in panic.
Authorities had not yet publicly identified a suspect by Wednesday evening, nearly six hours after the shooting. FBI Director Kash Patel said an unnamed “subject” had been detained for questioning and then released.
Kirk, 31, was a pioneer in the conservative movement and harnessed the power of social media to lure millions of young Americans into Trump’s MAGA base.
“No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States better than Charlie,” Trump said in a social media post announcing Kirk’s death.

“Vicious spiral”
Trump himself was the subject of two assassination attempts last year. In one, the shooter was killed by authorities seconds after he fired. In the other, a man was arrested carrying a rifle and scope near a Palm Beach golf club where Trump was playing. His trial began this week.
In addition to those, two recent high-profile attacks by right-wing conspiracy theorists this year shook lawmakers and government workers across the country. In June, a Christian nationalist murdered a senior Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota, and wounded a second Democrat. In August, a gunman obsessed with COVID-19 conspiracies sprayed gunfire at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, killing a police officer.
Since January, at least 21 people have been killed in political violence incidents, 14 of them in a car bomb attack in New Orleans by a jihadist claiming loyalty to the Daesh group early on New Year’s Day.
In May, a pro-Palestinian activist murdered two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, and told police after his arrest, “I did it for Gaza,” according to court documents.
In July, a group of at least 11 militants in black military-style clothing attacked an immigration detention center in Texas, the Justice Department said. The group set off fireworks, spray-painted “traitor” and “ICE Pig” on vehicles, and shot a responding police officer in the neck, wounding him, while another sprayed gunfire at detention guards, the FBI said.
Since returning to office, Trump has scaled back efforts to counter domestic extremism, redirecting resources toward immigration enforcement and citing the southern border as the top security threat.
Jensen, the University of Maryland researcher who tracks violence for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, said the future appears grim.
“This is an administration that, whether you agree with it or not, has made profound changes to this country in the eight months it’s been in office,” he said. “Some people love it, some people hate it. The people that hate it are starting to act out. People who love it are going to act out against those people that hate it, and it becomes a vicious spiral that could lead us into something really, really bad.”