Three people died and two were missing tonight as flash floods swept south and eastern France, forcing about 1,000 people to evacuate their homes and two nuclear reactors to close down temporarily.
A 45-year-old man was found dead after he was swept away by floodwater in a Marseille suburb, while a second person in the Mediterranean port city has been missing since yesterday.
The body of a woman was found in the River Meyne in nearby Orange while a man drowned in the Ardeche village of Arlebosc. A 53-year-old woman was missing in the Loire valley, thought to have fallen off a bridge into the swollen river below.
Rescue services used barges to evacuate some 1,000 people from their homes in a northern suburb of Marseille.
"We are on a war footing. The situation is extremely worrying the length of the Rhone valley," Mr Christian Fremont, prefect of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region, said of forecasts that the rain would last until Thursday.
"The earth is saturated and the wind is against us. It seems we are in for the long haul," he told reporters.
A spokeswoman for the government nuclear safety authority ASN said the two reactors were shut early today as a precaution after the heavy rains. She said the restarting of the reactors would depend on river levels.
The Meteo France weather agency said 150 mm of rain fell on Marseille in the past 24 hours and up to 213 mm in nearby towns - compared to seasonal norms of up to 70 mm.
Local train traffic was badly hit, with all trains cancelled along the Valence-Avignon artery and heavy delays elsewhere.