More than 3,000 evacuated as French floods toll reaches five

Terra Daily via AFP: The worst flooding in years in southern France has claimed five lives and forced more than 3,000 people to evacuate their homes, officials said Sunday. The latest victim was a 73-year-old man who died of heart failure in Rivesaltes, in the Pyrenees-Orientales region, when trying to force his car through a big dip in a road that was flooded.

Along the banks of the Agly river in the same region, some 2,800 people had been evacuated by late afternoon Sunday, the government office there said.

The flooding was considered already more serious than deadly overflows in 1999 and "we are evacuating residents within 200 metres (yards) of either side of the river," the government said. Another 560 people had already left their homes in Canet, Argeles-sur-Mer and Barcares, on the Mediterranean coast.