Torrential downpours and flooding have killed at least 15 people and four others remain missing in Chongqing, southwest China, state-run news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday, citing local authorities.

The deaths have been recorded since Monday as heavy rains have battered southwest China, prompting four counties in Chongqing to issue the highest level red alert warnings.

Videos from the sprawling megacity show residents being rescued, while authorities work to clear streets of floodwater.

China’s Ministry of Emergency Management also raised its emergency levels.

Neighboring Sichuan province has also been hard hit, with more than 460,000 residents affected by the heavy rain – but no casualties reported so far, according to the provincial government. More than 85,000 Sichuan residents have been displaced, state-run broadcaster CCTV reported Tuesday.

At least 400 emergency teams have been dispatched to help rescue and relief operations in the area, according to state media.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has ordered authorities to “give top priority” to keeping residents safe and minimizing losses, according to Xinhua.

He also told various government ministries, including flood control and emergency management authorities, to coordinate the response effort.

This summer has already seen heavy rain, with four people killed and three missing in Sichuan last week after landslides triggered by rainstorms and flash floods, Xinhua reported.

And videos emerged on Monday of the dramatic rescue of a couple trapped on their car roof after a riverbed flooded in central Henan province.

Rescue workers used a drone to deliver rope and life jackets to the couple, who huddled on their car amid rushing brown water before being “dragged” to the river bank by a crane, according to CCTV.

The floods come as other parts of China battle intense heat waves in yet more examples of extreme and unpredictable weather that experts say is a sign of the climate crisis’ impact.

Earlier this week, the country registered the highest number of hot days over six months since records began, according to authorities.

China has already experienced four regional heat waves so far this summer, which arrived earlier and have been more widespread and extreme than in previous years, according to the National Climate Center.

Northern China, a heavily populated region with hundreds of millions of residents, has been particularly hard hit, with more heat waves expected in coming weeks.

At least 16 people, including children, have died after a gas leak at a South African slum near Johannesburg, emergency services said Thursday, revising the death toll after some people were resuscitated.

The Wednesday night disaster thought to be linked to illegal mining activities, occurred at the Angelo informal settlement east of Johannesburg.

“We have got 16 on scene now that are confirmed dead, and the intervention of paramedics managed to revive some others and they were taken to hospital,” emergency services spokesman William Ntladi told AFP from the scene.

Of those in hospital, four are in “critical” condition while 11 are in “serious but stable” condition, he said. One, who he described as a minor, was fully conscious, he added.

Five women and three children were among the dead.

Fire and emergency services received a call around 8 pm (1800 GMT) about a gas explosion, but on arrival they discovered it was “a gas leakage from a cylinder” containing a “poisonous gas”, Ntladi said.

In a statement he said the cause of the incident “is alleged to be a nitrate oxide gas leakage from the cylinder used in an illegal mining activity in and around the settlement.”

“Apparently, the illegal miners used the gas to extrapolate gold out of the soil,” he said.

Upon arriving at the scene near the middle-class suburb of Boksburg, first responders found scores of people “lying all over the area due to inhalation of this toxic gas,” Ntladi said in the statement.

– Abandoned mine –

Rescue workers and forensic police combed through the affected area — a cluster of squalid shacks built out of bricks and corrugated iron sheets — late into the night, AFP journalists saw.

The area sits at the foot of an old and abandoned mine.

Neighbours gathered around a fire during the cold southern hemisphere winter, watching the stream of uniformed police officers and forensic investigators at work.

With a dizzying unemployment rate of more than 32 percent, South Africa is home to thousands of illegal miners nicknamed “zama zamas” which means “those who try their luck” in Zulu.

Thousands of unregistered miners scavenge obsolete mines for gold under arduous and often perilous conditions.

South Africa’s commercial hub Johannesburg and its surrounding areas are built around mountainous dumps of soil and cavernous pits left behind by generations of mining companies that started extracting during a gold rush in the 1880s.

Boksburg was last month struck by a 5.0 magnitude earthquake, suspected to have been linked to the maze of underground tunnels and shafts associated with illegal mining in the area.

The same suburb was also the scene of a massive gas tanker explosion that killed 41 people on Christmas Eve last year when a truck carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) got stuck under a bridge, triggering a leak and blast.

Among the victims were people and medics who had approached the scene either to help or see the trapped truck.

Dozens at a nearby hospital, including patients and staff members, sustained serious burns after the explosion, which smashed windows and caused the roof to collapse.

A record-breaking summer storm hammered the Netherlands and Germany on Wednesday, killing two people and throwing international air and rail travel into chaos.

Storm Poly packed howling winds of up to 146 km/h (90 mph), toppling trees and forcing the cancellation of 400 flights from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, one of Europe’s busiest hubs.

Meteorologists said the storm was the strongest on record to hit the Netherlands in the summer months and issued a rare “code red” warning for millions of people in the low-lying nation to stay indoors.

A 51-year-old woman was killed when a tree fell on her car in the Dutch city of Haarlem, while a 64-year-old woman died after being struck by a falling tree in the German town of Rhede near the Dutch border, police said.

Two men were seriously injured in Amsterdam, one when a tree fell on his car, while a second was believed to have been hit by falling power lines, local media said.

A tree also fell on a houseboat in one of Amsterdam’s historic canals, while another toppled onto a tram in The Hague, though no one was hurt.

– Howling winds –

Schiphol Airport said the number of flights would “gradually improve” as winds started to drop but would remain disrupted for the rest of the day.

“At the moment, 400 flights have been cancelled,” a Schiphol spokesperson told AFP. The airport is a major hub for connecting flights from Asia, the Middle East and the United States to the rest of Europe.

Eurostar trains from Amsterdam to London and high-speed rail services to the German cities of Cologne and Hamburg were also called off, while many domestic trains were cancelled, Dutch train operator NS said.

Most Dutch domestic trains were cancelled, including those to Schiphol airport, causing further misery for travellers.

Several hundred people were stranded at Amsterdam’s central station, including students touring Europe for their summer holidays, an AFP journalist said.

“They told me all the trains were cancelled. We’re going on a bus now to Brussels that’s going to get there at 2 am,” said British student Abby Scott, 18.

“I’m supposed to go to a party tonight — I think I might just walk to The Hague,” joked Ariane Gentile, 64, a school teacher.

Raging winds caused destruction across the country, with an entire row of trees falling on houses in a street in Haarlem, beach houses and even a school damaged in northern provinces.

– ‘Code red’ –

The government sent out a mobile phone alert urging people to stay indoors in North Holland province, which includes Amsterdam, and to call overstretched emergency services only in “life-threatening” situations.

The Dutch meteorological service KNMI said winds of force 11, the second highest on the scale, were measured along with a gust of 146 km/h measured in the northern port of IJmuiden.

It was the “first very severe summer storm ever measured” in the country, Dutch weather service Weerplaza said, adding that the gusts were also the strongest ever recorded in the summer in the Netherlands.

The last storm of similar strength to hit the Netherlands at any time was in January 2018, it said.

Storm Poly came a day after a small tornado hit the central city of Apeldoorn, causing damage but no injuries, local media said.

With around a third of the country lying below sea level, the Netherlands is vulnerable to extreme weather and the effects of climate change and has a huge system of water defences.

A violent North Sea storm on the night of January 31 to February 1, 1953, killed more than 1,836 Dutch people.