Four dead in Spanish storms

Four people are reported to have died, and another two are missing, presumed dead, after heavy storms and flooding in northern Spain.

The Spanish news agency Efe said that two Civil Guardsmen drowned after their inflatable vessel capsised in a river while they were searching for two brothers who went missing after a road-bridge collapsed, in north-eastern Catalonia. Spanish newspapers reported that an elderly woman drowned in floodwaters elsewhere in Catalonia, while an elderly man was drowned off the Basque coast. There has been snow and heavy rains on the French side of the Pyrenees as well.

As water levels rose, several hundred people were evacuated from camp-sites and homes.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service