River Po sweeps all before it

Vaste swathes of farmland are under water

Italy's north-east is braced for further flooding with weather forecasters warning the area could be hit by more rain on Friday.

The Italian Government on Thursday extended a state of emergency as far south as the lower Po Valley, where Alpine waters were threatening historic towns.

South of Mantua, emergency teams have been dumping tonnes of earth on the Po's banks in a desperate attempt to contain the torrents.

No insurance company is going to pay for this

Pensioner returning to ruined home

Waters around the town have risen by several metres and have reached levels not seen since floods in 1951.

"No insurance company is going to pay for this," said one pensioner as he surveyed his sodden home.

Floods which have now receded in the north-west left at least 24 people dead and five missing.

Controlled blast

At San Benedetto, just south of Mantua, civil protection authorities burst the banks of the Po, Italy's longest river, in a controlled explosion to release the furious pressure of the river.

Vulnerable communities downstream were in danger of being hit by a wall of water.

Thousands of hectares of land around Mantua have been submerged as a consequence, angering farmers and forcing hundreds of residents to flee to temporary accomodation.

In all, Italy's emergency services have evacuated more than 40,000 people since weekend torrents filled the Po and its tributaries to their highest levels in more than three decades.

Cremona and Piacenza, with their Romanesque architecture, were two of the medieval towns hit on Thursday.

Cleaning up

The country now faces what is likely to be a multi-billion-dollar clean-up bill.

"It is still too early to make an accurate evaluation, but we are already talking about thousands of billions of lire," said one official.

Damage estimates have been put at six trillion lire ($2.6bn) in the Lombardy region alone, which has not been as badly affected as Val d'Aosta or Piedmont.

The Italian Government has made available 150bn lire ($65 million) to help the regions cope with the crisis.

Across the border in Switzerland, the number killed in the floods has risen to 11 - nine of them in the village of Gondo which was destroyed by a mudslide at the weekend. Five more are still missing.