Spain sends thousands more troops to flood zone

Spain is deploying 10,000 more troops and police officers to the eastern Valencia region devastated by historic floods that have killed 211 people, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday.

Hopes of finding survivors ebbed four days after torrents of muddy water submerged towns and wrecked infrastructure in the European country's worst such disaster in decades.

Almost all the deaths have been recorded in the Valencia region, where thousands of security and emergency services personnel were frantically clearing debris and mud in the search for bodies.

Sanchez said in a televised address that the disaster was the second deadliest flood in Europe this century and announced a huge increase in the security forces dedicated to relief works.

The government had accepted the Valencia region leader's request for 5,000 more troops and informed him of a further deployment of 5,000 police officers and civil guards, Sanchez said.

Spain was carrying out its largest deployment of army and security force personnel in peacetime, he added.

Restoring order and distributing aid to destroyed towns and villages -- some of which have been cut off from food, water and power for days -- is a priority.

Authorities have come under fire over the adequacy of warning systems before the floods, and some stricken residents have complained the response to the disaster is too slow.

"I am aware the response is not enough, there are problems and severe shortages... towns buried by mud, desperate people searching for their relatives... we have to improve," Sanchez said.

In the ground-zero towns of Alfafar and Sedavi, AFP reporters saw no soldiers while residents shovelled mud from their homes and firefighters pumped water from garages and tunnels.

"Thank you to the people who have come to help us, to all of them, because from the authorities, nothing," a furious Estrella Caceres, 66, told AFP in Sedavi.

Authorities in the Valencia region have restricted access to roads for two days to allow emergency services to carry out search, rescue and logistics operations more effectively.

A video circulating in Spanish media on Saturday showed the head of a civil protection team celebrating the rescue of a person who had been trapped in a car for three days.

With telephone and transport networks severely damaged, establishing a precise figure of missing people is difficult.