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BBC News
Most of the dead perished after their
cars were swept away
At least
five people have been killed and three are missing in floods
that have been sweeping through eastern Spain since the
weekend.
Rescuers
have been using helicopters and mechanical diggers to reach
people trapped near the River Ebro in Catalonia, one of
the regions worst affected by storms and torrential rain.
Water levels in the Ebro are still rising dramatically and
hundreds of people living in the surrounding delta region
have been evacuated.
Rescue
workers are continuing their search for the three people
still missing - a young woman and two children, all from
separate families.
Towns
and villages along Spain's Mediterranean seaboard have been
inundated. Further down the coast, in Valencia and Murcia,
dozens of roads and railway lines have been cut.
Swept
away
In all,
states of emergency have been declared in 11 provinces,
with Zaragoza, Teruel and Albacete also badly hit.
Three
people were killed and one - a four-year-old boy - went
missing when their vehicle was swept away by flood waters
on Sunday, just south of Tarragona, near the town of Cambrils.
The Ebro is just a few centimetres away
from flooding. Catalan Government
At Ramonete,
near Murcia in the south-east, a woman died in a similar
incident. Her two-year-old child is amongst those missing.
And
just south of Amposta, a 90-year-old woman was found drowned
in her basement on Monday.
A 37-year-old
woman went missing in Cartagena, after she called her husband
on a mobile phone to say her car was being carried away
by rising waters in a nearby river, which had burst its
banks.
More
to come
Between
Tarragona and Castellon, the Ebro has risen by 2.5 metres
(eight feet) since the storms began.
About
1,000 homes in the region are without electricity.
"The
Ebro is just a few centimetres away from flooding,"
a spokesman for the Catalan regional Government said.
But
local emergency services expect the rains to ease as the
storm moves south.
"As
long as the river doesn't rise to seven metres, we should
be okay," a spokeswoman said.
Weather
forecasters do not expect the storms to abate until Thursday
at the earliest.
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