Geneva: Two people are dead and a third is missing after heavy rains lash southeastern Switzerland.
A heavy storm lashed the Alpine country with rain over the weekend, prompting hundreds of people to be evacuated in the west after breaching the banks of the Rhone River and its tributaries.
“The bodies of two people have been found by rescuers in connection with the landslide in the Fontana area,” said the Ticino cantonal police in Italy in a statement.
According to the regional newspaper La Regione, the dead were two women who were on holiday in the region.
Emergency services assessed the best way to evacuate 300 people attending a football match in Peccia, while 70 other people were evacuated from a holiday camp in the village of Mogno.
Bad weather made rescue efforts more difficult, with police earlier saying some valleys were inaccessible and power cuts were reported.
The federal warning system also said parts of the county had no drinking water.
In the western canton of Valais, the civil security service said “several hundred” people had been evacuated and roads were closed after flooding in parts of the Rhone. At the end of last week, one person was killed and a lot of damage was caused by heavy rain in southeastern Switzerland.
