ROME: The search for three people still missing after a storm and flooding disaster that struck the Italian region of Marche this week continued on Saturday.
Emergency services workers, including 400 firefighters, were looking for a man, a woman and an 8-year-old boy who had been ripped from his mother's arms during the storm on Thursday as they were getting out of their car.
"There was this superhuman force," the woman told the newspaper La Repubblica. Her son was holding on to a tree trunk, she said. "He was trying to stay afloat. A few seconds, then he disappeared into the darkness."
Ten people died, the prefecture in the city of Ancona announced late on Friday. Earlier, there had been talk of nine dead.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi visited the stricken area and said: "This is a disaster. We are doing our best." The government had declared a state of emergency for the area and provided emergency aid of $5 million.
Due to extreme downpours, rivers burst their banks in the region near the Adriatic coast. Masses of water and mud - some several metres high - pushed their way through the villages.
Several people were caught in their cars by the sudden floods, and some were unable to reach the upper floors of buildings. More than 50 people were injured, and about 150 people had to be evacuated from their homes by rescue workers.
After a spring and summer characterised by extreme drought, dry conditions and severe heat in Italy, the number of storms in the Mediterranean country has increased. However, the catastrophe in the Marche region could not have been foreseen, experts said.
Meanwhile, the region's civil defence force has already warned of further dangerous rainfall and called on the population of the regions already affected not to leave their homes if possible. - dpa
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