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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