EUROPE: Dresden slipped further under water last night as floods in eastern Germany continued to rise through the night. Derek Scally reports from Berlin.
The Chancellor, Mr Gerhardt Schröder, has called the situation a national catastrophe and has summoned a crisis meeting tomorrow with his Czech and Austrian counterparts and Mr Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission.
Flood waters have so far claimed 10 German lives and left 21 missing and over 60,000 people homeless.
"The water is taking our city hostage," said one distraught woman as she abandoned her home near Dresden's city centre. "The water came from nowhere and submerged the garage. We saved what we were able to save."
Soldiers and volunteers in Dresden gave up their fight to save the city's architectural jewels yesterday. The recently-restored Semper Opera House and surrounding museums were left to the mercy of the swollen Elbe river.
"There's no chance any more. We have to concentrate on saving people now," said a city spokesman. The river is rising by six centimetres an hour and last night reached the record level of 9.5 metres, nearly a metre above the level in 1845, the worst flood on record.
"The infrastructural damage is enormous. Billions of euro worth of investment has been washed away in Saxony alone," said Mr Otto Schily, the federal Interior Minister, in the city yesterday. "The task ahead is to limit the damage as much as possible."
One-third of the city is now without electricity or telephones, and seven neighbourhoods have been evacuated.
Authorities last night struggled to find beds for the 40,000 displaced residents. To ease pressure on beds, police sealed the approach roads to the city to deter what they termed "catastrophe tourists".
Halls and school gymnasiums filled up with locals, some carrying bags, others with bewildered children.
"All we can do is wait, but I never would have thought that it would be so bad," said Ms Waltraud Sommer (74) as she found a corner for the birdcage holding her pet budgie.
Flood levels receded further in the Czech Republic yesterday, with the water drifting north to Saxony and the neighbouring state of Saxony-Anhalt.
There the town of Bitterfeld was a ghost town last night after the majority of its 16,000 residents fled.
Shop-owners emptied their shelves, and car salesman drove their unsold vehicles to higher ground.
Hundreds of residents spent the day building a 600-metre sand-bag dam after a nearby dyke burst.
But officials expected the town to be under three metres of water by this morning.
Flood waters have driven at least 30,000 people from their homes in the eastern cities of Magdeburg and Dessau. As far north as Hamburg, authorities are bracing themselves for the flood water that is slowly making its way down the Elbe.
The German Red Cross reported yesterday that in two days it has received over €2 million in donations.