On France’s Riviera coast, the rise of the River Garonnette in the Var region swept five cars towards the nearby sea, as torrential rain wrought havoc on the night of Wednesday to Thursday.

Two people were found dead in one of the cars, which was tossed upside down in the water and left rocking on its roof in shallow-water waves on a beach. The bodies of a man and a woman were discovered by scuba divers at Saint-Maxime, near the famed film-festival city of Cannes.

In Italy, the island of Sardinia was also hit by bad weather. Hours of heavy rain pushed river levels dangerously high. A woman died after her car was trapped by the flooding, while a shepherd was reported missing.

The woman had been with her husband and three children who fled from their home, fearing that a nearby river at Assemini was set to burst its banks, ANSA reported.

Dozens of people in the Cagliari region were evacuated, and several roads were closed due to collapse or high water levels.

Clean-up operations are continuing in the Spanish island of Mallorca after deadly flash flooding killed at least 12 people, including three Germans, two Britons and a Dutch woman.

The British couple killed have been named by the UK Foreign Office as Antony and Delia Green, who lived at Moffat in southern Scotland. They were in their seventies and had been in a taxi which became submerged by flood water in the resort of S’illot. The taxi driver, Juan Sillero, was also killed.

The search has been ongoing for a five-year-old boy reported missing following the storm on Tuesday. His mother is thought to have died while trying to save him and his sister from flood waters. She reportedly managed to pull her seven-year-old daughter from their car but was dragged away with her son.

Residents are clearing mud and removing debris from the streets in San Llorenc des Cardassar, one of the towns most devastated by the sudden floods. Mallorcan-born tennis champion Rafael Nadal, who lives in the area, helped in the clean-up effort – while his tennis academy at nearby Manacor opened up as an emergency shelter.

The regional government has declared three days of mourning. Spain’s central government says it has taken the first steps to ensure that those affected receive the necessary help as soon as possible. </s> At least two people have died when several cars were swept away by flash floods triggered by heavy rain in southern France.

Five cars were swept away when a small local river flooded in the coastal town of Sainte-Maxime, local administration chief Jean-Luc Videlaine earlier told broadcaster BFMTV.

Helicopters and police teams searched the area which received nearly 200mm of rain overnight.

Sainte-Maxime is just north of the well-known resort town of Saint-Tropez on France's Mediterranean coast. </s> Image caption Rescue workers in Majorca are searching for a missing child

The search continues for missing people following flash flooding in parts of Spain, Italy and France.

Twelve died - including a British couple - when torrential rain lashed eastern Majorca in Spain. An eight-year-old local boy is still missing.

Three Germans and a Dutch woman were among those who lost their lives.

A flash flood on France's south coast killed two people in Sainte-Maxime while a woman was found dead after a storm in Sardinia, Italy.

Image caption The two British victims were found in this taxi, which had been swept away

Looters

The two British victims of the Majorca floods were named as Anthony and Delia Green, a pair of holidaymakers in their 70s, from Moffat in Dumfries and Galloway.

They were discovered in their submerged taxi, which had been swept away in Sillot, near the tourist town of Sant Llorenç. The body of the taxi driver was discovered nearby.

Image copyright EPA Image caption Homes in Sant Llorenç suffered heavy flood damage

Police in Sant Llorenç say they are dealing with many incidents of looting and have increased patrols.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said it will take months to return the disaster-hit towns to normality.

More than 100 rescue workers searched through the night for the missing eight-year-old boy. He is believed to have been in a car with his mother, who is among the victims.

His sister, who was also in the car, survived and was rescued.

The world's number one tennis player, Rafael Nadal, has opened the doors of his tennis academy in Manacor, near Sant Llorenç, and was photographed taking part in the clean-up effort as a volunteer.

Nadal was born in Manacor. He tweeted his condolences to victims' families, calling it a "sad day for Majorca".

Swept away

In southern France the rise of the River Garonnette in Saint-Maxime swept five cars towards the nearby sea.

Two bodies were found in one of the cars, which had been tossed upside down in the water.

Saint-Maxime lies in the Var region, where local authorities had urged people not to take to the flooded roads and to seek shelter during the heavy rainfall.

According to the BFMTV news site, 210mm (8in) of rain fell on Wednesday night - two months' worth of normal rainfall.

Bridge down

In Italy, the Cagliari area of Sardinia was also hit by bad weather, and one woman was found dead on Thursday. Her car had got trapped by the flooding.

Italian news agency Ansa named her as 45-year-old Tamara Maccario and said she and her family had left their home near a river over fear of the impending floodwater. The vehicle was swept away at about midnight on Wednesday.

Image copyright AFP / Guardia de Finanza Image caption Aerial footage showed the extent of damage to the roads in Italy

Ansa reports that one of the woman's daughters was found clinging to a tree, while two other children and their father were found in two separate homes nearby.

Ms Maccario's body was found on Thursday morning. Another man was also reported missing.

Large parts of Cagliari remain underwater, demonstrated in a video posted by Italian firefighters.

Roads and bridges have also been damaged.

Dozens of people have been evacuated, and several roads have been closed due to either collapse or dangerously high water levels. </s> The search continues for missing people following flash flooding events in Spain, Italy, and France.

Ten people died in Majorca, Spain, including two British citizens. Three more remain unaccounted for, including a five-year-old child.

Elsewhere, torrential rain and flooding killed a number of people caught in their cars during floods.

Two people died in Sainte-Maxime on France's south coast, while a woman was found dead in Sardinia.

The two British victims of the Majorca floods have been named locally as Anthony and Delia Green, a pair of holidaymakers in their 70s.

They were discovered in their taxi, which had been swept away by the water near the tourist town of Sant Llorenç. The body of the taxi driver was discovered nearby.

More than one hundred rescue workers searched through the night for the missing five-year-old boy. He is believed to have been in a car with his mother, who is among the victims.

His sister, who was also in the car, survived and was rescued.

The other two missing people are German nationals.

Local newspaper Diario de Mallorca reports that as of Thursday morning, 323 people are searching for the survivors - a combination of police, emergency responders, and military personnel.

Meanwhile, the cleanup continues in the badly hit town of Sant Llorenç.

The world's number one tennis player, Rafael Nadal, has opened the doors of his tennis academy in the next town over, Manacor, and was photographed taking part in the cleanup effort as a volunteer.

Nadal was born in Manacor. He tweeted his condolences to victims' families, calling it a "sad day for Majorca".

Swept into the sea in France

In France, the rise of the river Garonnette in Saint-Maxime caused five cars to be swept away by the nearby sea.

One of the cars had its headlights on, and witnesses said a person was behind the wheel at the time.

On Thursday morning, French broadcaster BFMTV said divers had discovered the vehicle in the water, and announced two deaths.

The victims have not been identified, but are understood to have been two passengers from the same vehicle.

Saint-Maxime lies in the Var region, where local authorities had urged people not to take to the flooded roads and seek shelter during the heavy rainfall.

BFMTV said that 210mm (8in) of rain fell on Wednesday night - two months' worth of normal rainfall. Search and rescue teams were forced to suspend their work overnight, resuming on Thursday morning.

The regional leader, Jean-Luc Videlaine, warned that the death toll may rise.

In Italy, the Cagliari area of Sardinia has also been hit by bad weather, and one woman was found dead on Thursday.

She was declared missing on Wednesday night, after her car became trapped by the flooding.

Italian news agency Ansa named her as 45-year-old Tamara Maccario, and said she and her family had left their home near a river over fear of the impending floodwater. The vehicle was swept away at about midnight on Wednesday.

Ansa reports that one of the woman's daughters was found clinging to a tree, while two other children and their father were found in two separate homes nearby.

Ms Maccario's body was found on Thursday morning. Another man has also been reported missing.

Large parts of Cagliari remain underwater, demonstrated in a video posted by Italian emergency responders.

Roads and bridges have also been damaged.

Dozens of people have been evacuated, and several roads have been closed due to either collapse or dangerously high water levels. </s> Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Several months' of rain hit France's southern Aude region, causing multiple fatalities

At least 10 people have been killed by flash floods in the Aude region of southern France.

Local authorities say several months' worth of rain fell in just a few hours overnight, leaving roads blocked in some areas.

A nun was swept away by the River Aude, local broadcaster BFMTV reports.

Separately, a policewoman attending to a weather-related traffic accident in the town of Albi was hit and killed by a motorist.

The death toll has been revised down from 13, France's interior ministry explained, because of an error which meant some of the dead had been counted twice.

Alain Thirion, the prefect of Aude, said people were stranded on rooftops and would have to be evacuated by air because it was too dangerous by boat.

One person was injured, he added, when a house collapsed in the locality of Cuxac.

The floods are the worst the Aude river has seen in more than 100 years, according to the weather monitoring service Vigicrues.

Image copyright EPA Image caption Hundreds of emergency service workers are taking part in rescue efforts

Seven helicopters and 700 emergency service workers have been deployed, according to France's Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, who has also visited the area.

An angry resident of Villegailhenc told the prime minister there had been a lack of public information, including from the media, when flooding hit in the early hours.

People on social media have also been sharing photos showing the extent of the damage to homes and streets in the area.

The BBC's Chris Bockman says heavy rain in the region is not uncommon at this time of year, but it has been exacerbated by growing numbers of homes being built on flood plains.

Residents of the worst-hit areas have been urged to stay inside their homes by emergency services and local authorities, who have issued a red alert.

In Trèbes, floodwater is as high as seven metres (23ft), local authorities say. Footage from the early hours of Monday shows the rising waters.

All roads are inaccessible to the north of Carcassonne municipality and schools are shut, authorities say.

A bridge was torn down and carried away by the force of the water in Villegailhenc.

An amber warning for flooding has also been issued for the nearby regions of Aveyron, Haute-Garonne, Hérault, Pyrénées-Orientales and Tarn.

The region is popular with tourists, many of whom are drawn to the medieval hilltop city of Carcassonne. </s> Flash floods have left several people dead in southwest France, with roads swept away and streams become raging torrents as the equivalent of several months of rain fell overnight, authorities said Monday.

This photo provided by Stephane Jourdain, after a torrent of water ripped out the bridge in Villegailhenc, southern France, Monday Oct. 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Stephane Jourdain)

Flash floods tore through towns in southwest France, turning streams into raging torrents that authorities said killed at least seven people and seriously injured five others. Some people had to be helicoptered to safety from the roofs of their homes as overnight storms dumped several months of rain in just a few hours.

Authorities said four deaths were clustered around the town of Villegailhenc in the Aude region, where a powerful, roiling surge of muddy water and debris ripped out a bridge.

Even as diluvial overnight rains that swept in from the Mediterranean began to ease Monday morning, France’s Interior Ministry said the toll of seven deaths and five serious injuries could rise.

In Villegailhenc, Ines Siguet said the waters rose so quickly that people were stranded on the roofs of their homes and had to be helicoptered to safety. She posted video of the ripped-up road where the bridge used to be, with the town now cut in half.

“There’s nothing left, there’s just a hole,” the 17-yearold resident told The Associated Press. “It was very violent.”

Other roads also were flooded, leaving the town cut off. Siguet’s school was shut down amid the destruction.

Alain Thirion, the prefect of the Aude, said some of the dead appeared to have been swept away by floodwaters. In the town of Conques-sur-Orbiel, the river rose by more than six meters (20 feet), he said.

Floodwaters were in some cases too powerful for emergency services to get through, even on boats, he said.

Television images showed waters coursing through French towns and villages, with cars stranded in the floods and piled up on top of each other like children’s toys.

The French government rushed hundreds of rescue workers into flash flood zone and helicopters buzzed overhead. Schools were closed and authorities were urging people to stay home.

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. </s> Flash floods tore through towns in southwest France, turning waterways into raging torrents that killed at least 13 people, nine of them in just one town, authorities said Monday. People had to be helicoptered to safety from the roofs of their homes as overnight storms dumped the equivalent of several months of rain in just a few hours.

Worst hit was the town of Trebes, east of the medieval walled city of Carcassonne. The rains that swept in from the Mediterranean killed nine people there, Interior Ministry spokesman Frederic de Lanouvelle said. He told BFMTV that the floods in the Aude region also killed four other people in other locations, left one person missing and seriously injured five others.

In the town of Villegailhenc, witness Ines Siguet said the waters rose so quickly that people were stranded on the roofs of their homes and had to be helicoptered to safety. (AP)

See more news-related photo galleries and follow us on Yahoo News Photo Twitter and Tumblr. </s> Floods kill at least five as storms thrash Italy

A man battles the heavy rain and floods on the way to a football match in Rome September 10, 2017. — Reuters picROME, Sept 10 — At least five people have died in violent rainstorms sweeping across Italy today, with the Tuscan city of Livorno taking the brunt of the flooding, fire services said.

Four people from the same family were found dead in a flooded house in the city, where 40 centimetres of rainfall in four hours transformed streets into rivers and washed away cars.

The Corriere della Sera daily said the dead were a little girl, her parents and a grandparent.

A fifth body was found in an area devastated by landslides. Three other people were missing, the fire brigade said.

“The situation is very difficult, it’s critical. We fear a disaster,” Livorno mayor Filippo Nogarin said.

Italy’s civil protection service issued a code orange alert for Florence as the storms, which began in northern Italy overnight, swept down the country towards the south.

Underpasses were being closed as a precaution in the capital Rome.

Coldiretti, Italy’s main agricultural organisation, said the bad weather was aggravated by coming hard on the heels of a drought which had left the land drier than usual and unable to soak up the rains.

Rainfall in Tuscany in particular had been down 57 per cent this summer, it said.

“The tropicalisation of the climate is causing an increase in extreme weather events, with heat waves, heavy cloud bursts and violent hailstorms which are damaging the national agricultural production,” Coldiretti said.

It put the cost of the damage at over €14 billion (RM70.7 billion) in the last 10 years. — AFP </s> Storms, floods in Sicily kill at least 12 people; 2 missing

ROME (AP) — Storms lashing Sicily have killed at least 12 people with torrential floods, Italian authorities said as the country's leader headed Sunday to the stricken Mediterranean island. Divers pulled out nine of those victims from a home flooded by a rapidly swelling river in the countryside near Palermo.

State TV broadcaster RaiNews24 said the sole survivor of the flood that ravaged the home with water and mud was the owner, who had just stepped outside to walk the family dogs Saturday when the torrent hit.

News reports said the man at first clung to a tree, then ended up on the roof of a nearby house. He used his cellphone to call for help but it was too late for the others, who included a one-year-old baby, a three-year-old child and a teenager. The victims were from two families who had gathered in the country villa for the weekend.

A man's body was also found on a guardrail along a Palermo-area road after floodwaters swept away his car, Italian news reports said.

Across the island, in the town of Cammarata, near Agrigento, the fire department said its divers were working to recover the bodies of two people swept away while driving on a road near the flooding Saraceno River.

Also in Agrigento province, firefighters rescued 14 people from a hotel in the town of Montevago, which was threatened by floodwaters from the Belice River.

Agrigento, famed for the ruins of ancient Greek temples, is a popular tourist destination.

Elsewhere in Sicily, at least two other people were missing Sunday after floodwaters swept away their cars, including a doctor heading to the hospital in the hill town of Corleone.

Other storms had battered northern Italy earlier in the week, killing at least 15 people, uprooting millions of trees near Alpine valleys and leaving several Italian villages without electricity or road access for days.

In Casteldaccia, the hamlet where the river flooded the home in Sicily, neighbor Maria Concetta Alfano said she, her husband and their adult disabled daughter fled after barking dogs drew their attention to the rising waters in the Milicia River, the Italian news agency ANSA said. It quoted the husband, Andrea Cardenale, as saying he drove away as "water was up to the hood of the car."

Rescuers retrieved the bodies from the home. A Sicilian prosecutor opened an investigation to determine if any human error, such as possible inadequate drainage of the river, might have played a role in the deaths.

Frances D'Emilio is on twitter at www.twitter.com/fdemilio.
Heavy floods affect France and Italy: in the French city of Sainte Maxime, two people drown after their vehicle is swept away by floodwater. In the Italian city of Cagliari, a woman is found dead inside her car, while another man is missing. A bridge also collapses and roads are damaged.