Thousands flee as flood waters threaten Dresden landmarks

MORE than 30,000 people were evacuated from historic Dresden yesterday as floodwaters in the Elbe River surged past an all-time high, closing in on cultural landmarks already waterlogged by an earlier wave of high water.

At the famed 19th century Semper Opera in the old city, emergency crews gave up pumping water out of the basement as the dirty brown tide kept rising yesterday.City authorities ordered bridges across the Elbe closed to all but emergency traffic.

The Elbe - fed by high water that earlier devastated Prague - rose above nine metres yesterday, shattering the previous all-time high of 8.76 metres reached in 1845. City officials said the flood wave was expected to crest on Saturday.

Across Dresden, adults and children built sandbag barriers, cars floated in flooded streets and residents used rubber boats to get around.

A terminal at Dresden airport was transformed into a 145-bed emergency hospital for some of the hundreds of patients evacuated from hospitals in the city. Other parts of east Germany are braced for floods in the next few days.

Up to 20,000 residents were to be evacuated from Magdeburg, about 120 miles down the Elbe to north.

In Dresden, the number of people forced to leave residences, hospitals and nursing homes rose to 33,000 after several neighbourhoods were evacuated, police spokesman Marko Laske said.

Floodwaters threatened to push further into the Semper Opera and the Zwinger painting gallery of old masters, both already hit by a first wave early this week. Thousands of priceless artworks stored in basements have been brought to safety on higher floors or at other locations.

The death toll in Europe's flooding rose to at least 103 after Czech authorities found the bodies of a motorist swept away by floodwaters and of a 44-year-old drowning victim in a swollen brook.

Authorities in Saxony state, where Dresden is the capital, reported a new flood-related death, bringing Germany's total to 12.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder invited leaders of Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to discuss flood relief Sunday at his offices in Berlin, the German government announced.

World motor racing champion Michael Schumacher donated one million euros (£640,000) to aid German flood victims.

"It is really terrible to see the pictures on the news", said the German driver in Budapest preparing for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

At east Germany's biggest chemical industry complex in Bitterfeld, some plants moved chemicals to higher ground and partly shut down as a precaution. But a spokesman for the sprawling facility, Matthias Gabriel, said it was not at risk from floodwaters.

In Prague, city officials were still refusing to let people return to the historic Old Town because of the danger that as floodwaters recede, buildings and palaces will cave in and collapse.

Vladimir Vihan, a deputy mayor in charge of cultural monuments and palaces, said much of the city is built on sand _ and as the waters recede, sand also will be swept away, leaving pockets underground and making much of the Old Town unstable.

Some streets in the Old Town already have caved in, he said, although officials had no details.

"We fear that in the coming days and weeks, houses, palaces and more streets will cave in," Vihan said. "It can come later."

In Hungary, about 1,000 people worked through the night stacking sandbags on a bend in the Danube north of Budapest, where the high water was expected Saturday.

In Austria, where the floods left seven dead, the capital Vienna was spared major flooding as the Danube receded.

:: Heavy rains burst two dams and sent a wave of flood waters roaring over villages in central Mexico, where authorities said at least 11 people were killed.

Officials in the states of San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas, where the dams broke, warned that three other dams were at their limit, and one appeared at risk of breaking.