Thousands flee as floods encroach on Dresden

Floodwaters began to recede this morning in the Czech capital, Prague, but downriver the German city of Dresden was playing the waiting game with the rising Elbe river, as water seeped into the basements of two of the city's cultural monuments.

Emergency workers hoped to save the famed Semper-Oper opera house and the Zwinger palace, home to a renowned collection of Renaissance paintings.

At least 10 people have died in the German flooding and more than 20,000 people have been evacuated.

Officials said the Elbe, which had already submerged some of the city's historic squares and palaces, was expected to rise to a 150-year high of 8.5m later today.

Dresden has undergone reconstruction after being heavily bombed during the second world war, only to see the floods threatening to undo the work.

Across central Europe more than 80 people have died in the torrential downpours that caused the flooding.

In Prague the Vltava river - which feeds into the Elbe - has dropped 20cm (8in) away from the top of the steel barriers that protect the old town.

Firefighters and volunteers still had to fight to hold back floodwaters threatening the neo-Renaissance Czech national theatre, opened in 1881 in honour of the visiting Hapsburg crown prince Rudolf.

Its basement was flooded, and volunteers worked in mud and puddles to try to keep the waters from encroaching further.

Hundreds of thousands of Czechs have fled the rushing waves of the Vltava and dozens of other rivers, searching for higher ground amid torrential rain.

About 70,000 inhabitants of the capital's 1 million people left their homes, officials said yesterday.

Much of the city remained without electricity or phone services today, and at least three streets in the centre were accessible only by boat. Officials shut off natural gas pipelines as a precaution.