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After heavy rains, many areas in the Marche region of Italy are flooded
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- / dpa
In the Italian region of Marche, the search for three more people missing from the storm and flood disaster has continued.
The emergency services, including 400 firefighters, were looking for two adults - a man and a woman - and an eight-year-old boy on Saturday morning.
This had been ripped from his mother's arms during the storm on Thursday evening when they were just getting out of their car.
"There was this superhuman strength," the woman told the newspaper La Repubblica.
Her son held on to a tree trunk.
'He wanted to stay afloat.
A few seconds, then he disappeared into the darkness.”
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Ten people died in the accident, as announced by the prefecture in the city of Ancona late Friday evening.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi visited the affected area and said: "This is a disaster.
We're doing our best.« The government had declared a state of emergency for the area and provided emergency aid of five million euros.
Due to extreme downpours, rivers burst their banks in the areas near the Adriatic coast, masses of water and mud pushed through the villages, some of them meters high.
A number of people were caught in their cars by the sudden flooding, and some couldn't make it to the top floors of the buildings.
More than 50 people were injured and around 150 people had to be evacuated from their homes by rescue workers.
Extreme heat and drought in summer
After a spring and summer that was characterized by sometimes extreme drought, dryness and heat in Italy, the storms in the Mediterranean country increased recently.
The catastrophe in the Marche was not foreseeable, experts said.
The civil defense of the region warned of further dangerous rainfall and called on the population of the regions already affected not to leave their homes if possible.
kek/dpa