Death toll in Spain floods reaches 205, rescuers brace for more

The death toll from Spain's worst floods in a generation has climbed to 205, rescuers said on Friday, with the number expected to rise as more people are believed missing.

Spanish rescuers opened a temporary morgue in a convention centre and battled to reach areas still cut off on Friday as the death toll from catastrophic floods rose to 205 people in Europe's worst weather disaster in five decades.

In Valencia, the eastern region that bore the brunt of thedevastation, at least 202 people have died, regional authorities said. Three have died in Castilla La Mancha and Andalusia.

The number of dead is now almost level with the 209 who died during heavy floods in Romania in 1970. Floods in Portugal in 1967 killed nearly 500 people.

Some 500 soldiers were deployed to search for people who are still missing and help survivors of the storm, which triggered a fresh weather alert in Huelva in southwestern Spain. The death toll is likely to keep rising, with dozens of people still not accounted for, Angel Victor Torres, minister in charge of cooperation with Spain's regions, told a press conference late on Thursday.

With about 75,000 homes still without electricity, firefighters were siphoning petrol from cars that had been abandoned in the floods to power generators to get domestic supplies back on. "We're going from car to car looking for any petrol we can find," said one firefighter who had travelled to Valencia from the southern region of Andalusia to assist rescue efforts, carrying a plastic tube and empty bottles to collect the petrol from the cars' tanks. A year of rain fell in just eight hours on Tuesday night, destroying roads, railtracks and bridges as rivers burst their banks.