At least six die in Italy storms

At least six people were killed as torrential rain battered southern Italy overnight, demolishing a bridge, sweeping away cars and derailing a Eurostar train, police said yesterday.

Three members of a family were killed as their car plunged into a ravine when a bridge collapsed near Bari, the capital of the Apulia region, and two men drowned near the city when their cars were swept away by floods of water and mud.

Italian civil defence chief Guido Bertolaso, who immediately flew to Bari from Rome, described the deluge as an "exceptional climatic event which can only happen once in a hundred years".

"In just three hours in a limited area last night we had 161 millimetres of rain - as much as the Apulia region gets in a whole year," he told reporters.

Early yesterday, around 20 passengers were injured when six carriages of a Taranto to Milan Eurostar train were derailed near Bari after a landslide swept away the earth beneath the rail tracks, leaving one carriage overhanging a chasm.

The storms also caused one death near Catania, in Sicily, where rescuers yesterday recovered the body of a hunter who was listed as missing late on Saturday after raging floodwaters swept away his car.