Two dead in Germany floods

Berlin: At least two people died and several more were injured in the south of Germany after torrential storms caused severe flooding, with a third person also feared dead, authorities said on Monday.

In Schwaebisch Gmuend near the city of Stuttgart, a volunteer firefighter died on Sunday trying to rescue a man trapped in a flooded railway station, the municipal authorities said.

It was not immediately clear whether the man who was trapped survived the ordeal.

In Weissbach, just to the north, a 60-year-old man died in a flooded underground garage on the same day.

The regional authorities in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg put the number of injured at below 10.

Violent storms and torrential rain on Sunday evening and during the night caused severe damage in the regional state.

A number of people had to be rescued from their cars trapped in the floods.

The German news agency DPA said that a river brokes its banks in Braunsbach, destroying one house and damaging several others.

Eyewitnesses posted videos on social network sites showing cars being carried away by the floods and crashing into shop windows.

The head of one rural district in Schwaebisch Hall, Michael Knaus, said that more rain fell in the space of a few hours than normally falls over several months.

The Baden-Wuerttemberg authorities said that as many as 7,000 firefighters, police officers and rescue workers were called out in some 2,200 incidents.

yap/spm/ser