প্রকাশ: 19/08/2022
Powerful
storms have battered areas of central and southern Europe, killing at least 12
people including three children.
The
deaths, most from falling trees, were reported in Italy and Austria, and on the
French island of Corsica.
Heavy rain and winds wrecked campsites on the island, while in Venice, Italy, masonry was blown off the belltower of St Mark's Basilica. The storms follow weeks of heatwave and drought across much of the continent.
In Corsica, winds gusting up to 224 km/h (140mph) uprooted trees and damaged mobile homes. Authorities there said a 13-year-old girl was killed by a falling tree on a campsite.
A man died in a similar incident and a 72-year-old woman was killed when her car was hit by the detached roof of a beach hut. Two other people, a fisherman and a female kayaker, died out at sea.
Interior
Minister Gérald Darmanin, who arrived in Corsica on Thursday, said 20 people
had been injured - four of them seriously.
Several
campsites were evacuated on Thursday evening ahead of more expected damage.
A state of
natural disaster could be declared, Mr Darmanin said. Extreme storms have
become more frequent recently because of climate change.
Witnesses
to the storms said they had been completely unexpected and no warning was
given.
"We
have never seen such huge storms as this, you would think it was a tropical
storm," restaurant owner Cedric Boell told Reuters news agency.
On the
French mainland, some southern areas were hit by power cuts and streets were
flooded in the country's second city, Marseille.
In Austria
two girls were killed by a falling tree near a lake in Carinthia.
Later,
three more deaths were reported by media in Lower Austria province, also as a
result of a falling tree.
Meanwhile
in Italy, a man and a woman were killed by falling trees in separate incidents
in the region of Tuscany.
High winds
swept through Venice, blowing café umbrellas across St Mark's Square and
dislodging brickwork from the cathedral belltower.
Image
caption,
Parts of
Venice's St Mark's Square were cordoned off after the storm
Seaside
resorts in Tuscany and further north in Liguria were damaged by the storms.
Tuscan
regional leader Eugenio Giani posted a video of a ferris wheel spinning out of
control in high winds at Piombino.
ut in
southern Italy, the heatwave continued, with temperatures of up to 40C recorded
in Sicily.
And across
the Mediterranean Sea in Algeria, at least 38 people have died in
forest fires
Many parts
of Europe have seen weeks of exceptionally hot and dry weather.
Extreme
weather events, including both heatwaves and storms, have become more intense
and more frequent in recent years because of human-induced climate change.
The world has already warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.
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