The risk of flooding has increased in several regions of Germany due to rising water levels in many rivers following heavy rainfall, emergency services said.
According to the Federal Office for Disaster Prevention (BBK), a district of the town of Rinteln in Lower Saxony, in the north of the country, was evacuated due to the "extreme danger" of the Weser river overflowing its banks.
A day earlier in Thuringia, eastern Germany, around 500 residents of the towns of Herringen and Windelhausen, located on the banks of the Helme River, had already had to leave their homes due to rising waters that caused power cuts.
"Windelhausen is under water," the head of Thuringia's regional government, Bodo Ramelow, announced on his X profile.
In Lower Saxony, in the Leer region, several hundred firefighters were mobilized to form a human chain and use sandbags to stabilize the dikes, local emergency services spokesman Dominique Jansen told AFP.
The risk of flooding is also increasing in the western and southern parts of the country, where river levels are approaching record levels in several places. This is the result of very heavy rain over the Christmas period and snow melting due to unusually high temperatures.
Authorities urged residents in those areas to stay away from rivers and avoid levees. /BGNES