"Bridges, houses and schools were flattened; hydropower stations were destroyed; livestock was decimated... and agricultural land was made unusable"

This was the statement the International Committee of the Red Crescent (ICRC) issued Tuesday, November 21st, 2006, regarding the flooding in the northern autonomous region of Kurdistan which began on October 25th and continued until early November.

Heavy rains, thunderstorms and enormous mudslides submerged vast areas and made nearly 3,000 families homeless, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, as reported by the IRIN news source at the Reuters Foundation humanitarian AlertNet web site.

At least 20 people in Kurdistan were killed and dozens injured while infrastructure was severly damaged.

Meanwhile in the predominantly Kurdish southeast region of Turkey, 38 people were killed during the flooding caused by torrential rains, according to a USA Today report. The floods were the worst to hit the area since 1937, according to this Reuters report.

Obviously this flooding in northern Iraq's Kurdistan region is not the flood predicted by Jeremiah, but perhaps it is a harbinger of what is to come, and as such, is a warning to get out of the way:

"The sea has come up over Babylon; she has been engulfed with its tumultuous waves. Her cities have become an object of horror... (Then) I shall dry up her sea and make her fountain dry. And Babylon will become a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, an object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants" (Jer. 51:42-43, 37).

But that is the final calamity. Before that is the defeat at the hands of the Medes. And before that is the abandonment by the great nation and many kings. And before that is the burning of the cities at the punishment of the arrogant one...