Death Toll in Europe from Storm Rises to 8

Madrid, Dec 21 (AFP) The death toll from a storm that battered Spain, Portugal and France rose to eight on Saturday as the region braced for more violent winds and heavy rain.

A 32-year-old South Korean woman died Saturday, a day after being struck on the head by falling debris from a building in central Madrid, the Madrid region's interior minister said.

The building had passed an inspection in 2015 "but weather like this, with heavy rain and wind, causes these fateful cases," Enrique Lopez told reporters.

A man died Saturday after his car was swept away by a swollen river near the town of Huescar in the southern province of Granada, the regional government of Andalusia said in a statement.

Emergency services in Andalusia said a 68-year-old Dutch man who went missing while windsurfing in rough weather in Huelva province Friday had drowned.

Those three deaths bring to eight to the number of fatalities from the storm that has battered Spain, Portugal and southern France overnight Thursday to Friday. Storm Elsa flooded rivers, brought down power lines and disrupted rail and air travel across the region.

Six of the deaths have been in Spain and two in Portugal, where the extreme weather interrupted train services Saturday between the capital Lisbon and the second city Porto due to flooding on the rail tracks.

As a weakened Storm Elsa moved over Britain, the authorities in France, Portugal and Spain all warned of a fresh threat.

Storm Fabien has already brought winds of 170 kilometres (105 miles) per hour in Galicia in northwestern Spain, forcing the cancellation of 14 flights according to Spanish airport operator Aena.

Another 13 flights were diverted from airports in Galicia to other parts of Spain or Portugal, it added.

Some 8,000 households in Galicia were without power due to damage caused to power lines by the wind, local officials said.

Spain's national weather office has put the entire coast of Galicia and the neighbouring region of Asturias on red alert on Saturday -- the highest in its four-scale alert scale -- due to strong winds and high waves.

Eight Madrid city parks remained shut Saturday because of the strong winds. Parks and cemeteries were also closed in Bordeaux in southwestern France on Saturday while the Arlette Gruss circus, which had set up in a big tent in the city's main square, cancelled three performances.

France's weather office placed 14 regions in the southwest of the country on orange alert earlier Saturday, as the storm battered its Atlantic coast.

The winds were as high as 148 kph at Socoa, on the southwest Atlantic coast near the border with Spain. Even up on the northwest coast of Brittany, winds reached up to 120 kilometres per hour.

France's SNCF rail network cancelled services between Bordeaux, Toulouse and Hendaye services in the southwest because of the likelihood of winds blowing trees down on to the line.

Officials on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica have closed all the island's airports Sunday because of the approaching storm. Ferry services to the mainline have also been suspended.

And officials on the island closed the roads into Ajaccio to try to prevent anyone getting caught in flood waters.

Nearly 10,000 homes are still without power in the southeast Rhone-Alpes region after storms overnight Thursday to Friday. (AFP)

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