Ten, mostly elderly, people died as floodwaters coursed through central Romania, the interior ministry said, taking the total death toll from flooding to 28 in the past week in a country that has been plagued by torrential rains since July.

Six others were missing and families were forced to evacuate 2,000 flooded homes.

In Austria, police found the body of a 52-year-old man in a mud-filled basement in the western Vorarlberg province, bringing the death toll there this week to three. Authorities were also looking for an elderly woman who was believed to have been washed away with her car.

In the Austrian Alps the rain stopped overnight and interior ministry spokesman Siegfried Jaches told AFP: "The worst is over." In neighbouring Germany, floodwaters that swept Bavaria on Tuesday, turning streets into surging rivers, lost their force as they moved from the Alps along the Danube, Inn and Isar rivers.

The regions downstream had prepared for the worst, packing sandbags around houses and businesses, but by late afternoon the emergency services said the situation was not as dire as feared.

"Images like you saw in southern Bavaria are not expected here," a spokesman for the city of Regensburg on the Danube said.

At the Bavarian ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the towns of Bad Toelz and Eschenlohe, workers began cleaning up the damage the floods left in their wake.

In the French Alps, road and rail traffic along the Isere river in the southeast was cut, with train services not expected to resume until Thursday and firemen were working to clear roads and the cellars of flooded houses.

A fire officer, Lieutenant Colonel Marc Philebon, said three villages had been badly affected by the deluge but that the situation was improving, with swollen rivers receding.

The weather relented over the Swiss Alps, where flooding has claimed four lives and caused damage of up to two billion Swiss Francs (1.28 billion euros). A massive clean-up operation swung into action.

Lakes remained at alarming levels and at both the Aar and Reuss rivers rescue workers rushed to clear away trees uprooted and swept along in recent days that threatened to break bridges.

In the Czech Republic, where the memories of the 2002 floods that devastated Prague are still fresh, rain abated in southern Bohemia and states of emergency were lifted. In western Hungary, the Kapos river dropped but hundreds of homes remained at risk.

While Pope Benedict XVI prayed for flood victims, German politicians campaigning for September elections visited affected regions, mindful perhaps of the role a similar disaster played in securing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's victory in 2002.

Schroeder in a telephone call to political foe and Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber Wednesday promised emergency funding for the region, his spokesman said.

But the chancellor accused Bavarian authorities of exacerbating the crisis by cutting funds earmarked for a 2.3-billion-euro (2.8-billion dollar) flood protection programme.

The pope in his weekly general audience in the Vatican said he felt spiritually close to those facing such "tragic hardship".

"My thoughts go to the regions of Europe hit in recent days by floods and fires which unfortunately have caused victims and great damage."

By contrast Portugal and Spain continued to suffer from the consequences of drought.

In Portugal, which is suffering its worst drought since 1945, a water-dropping plane dousing a forest fire in the centre of the country crashed, but the Spanish pilot escaped serious injury.

Some 1,500 firefighters and 600 soldiers were still battling blazes that broke out six days ago, but authorities said cooler weather was helping them contain more than a dozen fires though the risk of new ones remained high.

The number of fires out of control dropped Wednesday to five from 21.

The largest was raging in a forest near Coimbra, Portugal's third-largest city, and forced the evacuation of around 60 people from a village near the central town of Penela. But firefighters saw hope.

"The intensity of the fire is diminishing considerably. Let's see if we are a bit luckier today," the fire chief of Penela, Mario Lourenco, told radio TSF.

Neighbouring Spain, too, has this week battled blazes in the north that have so far destroyed more than 19,000 hectares (46,800 acres) this month.

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