- AFP) -- Europe cleaned up in battered towns after deadly
storms and gale-force winds at the weekend swept across the continent,
killing at least 30 people, including 10 in Germany.
-
- Violent gusts up to 180 kilometers (110 miles) per hour
left a trail of scattered trees, smashed cars and damaged buildings from
Poland to Britain.
-
- Thousands of homes without electricity were left in the
dark, while Polish trains stood still after tracks were broken and covered
in debris.
-
- Roads were slowly being cleared, but officials said flights
were cancelled in several major European airports, including London Heathrow,
Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and Amsterdam's Schiphol hub. In Amsterdam,
too, the roof of the central train station collapsed under the force of
the storm.
-
- Trees turned deadly during the weekend storms, falling
on cars and striking people in their gardens.
-
- Throughout Germany, falling trees killed three people,
including a Dutch woman.
-
- In Aachen, a 70-year-old died after falling head-first
into an overflowing sewer, and falling masonry killed another man in Hamm.
-
- A 46-year-old man was struck by lightning in the northern
state of Schleswig-Holstein. A 80-year-old woman, knocked over and pinned
to the ground by the wind, was run over by a car.
-
- Britain announced a total of seven deaths, all but one
from trees knocked down by winds whipped up on Sunday to nearly 160 kilometers
(100 miles) per hour.
-
- Two boys in eastern England also died after being struck
on the head by a tree in separate incidents, while a middle-aged man in
the region was also killed by a falling tree in his back garden.
-
- Trees crushed cars in central England, mid-Wales and
in Oxford, north of London, killing a total of three women and injuring
their traveling companions.
-
- A seventh British victim, a fisherman, was swept out
to sea while fishing off rocks with friends north of Aberdeen, east Scotland.
-
- English Channel winds topped 130 kilometers an hour,
contributing to a collision Sunday that damaged a British Royal Navy frigate
and a P and O ferry in Britain's southern Portsmouth Harbour but caused
no injuries.
-
- A German couple died in Austria, and a 31-year-old woman
in Switzerland was also killed -- all from falling trees.
-
- A stormy sea claimed the lives of three more people including
two surfers, who went missing off the Dutch coast. A fourth person was
feared drowned in the Westerschelde river.
-
- Four people were reported dead in France, while near
the Belgium city of Bruges, a 13-year-old rollerskater died when he was
blown into building machinery.
-
- In parts of Poland following a municipal election on
Sunday, "certain electoral commissions were forced to count votes
by candlelight," a voting official in the Szczecin region told PAP
news agency.
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