At least 16 dead as 'catastrophic' rain and flooding hit central Europe

The death toll from torrential rain and flooding in central and eastern Europe rose to at least 16 yesterday, with several more people missing, as officials reported deaths in the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria, and warned the worst may be yet to come.

- Jon Henley

The number of victims in Poland rose to five after a surgeon returning from work drowned in the southwestern town of Nysa, where the hospital was evacuated and patients rescued by raft. Four more people died in the towns of Bielsko-Biała and Lądek-Zdrój, firefighters said.

In Austria, local media reported that two men aged 70 and 80 drowned after being trapped by rising flood water in their homes in the towns of Böheimkirchen and Sierndorf, both in the hard-hit north-eastern state of Lower Austria.

The Czech police chief, Martin Vondrášek, told local radio a woman had drowned in a stream that overflowed its banks near Bruntál, a town of about 15,000 people in the northeast of the country, while seven more people were still unaccounted for.

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes across a swathe of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia as Storm Boris unleashed the worst flooding recorded in the region for more than two decades. It was described by one Romanian mayor as a "catastrophe of epic proportions".