Hundreds evacuated in Italy flooding

ROME: Flooding in Italy claimed the life of a Syrian-born doctor out visiting a patient and forced hundreds of people from their homes, as the search continued for a man reported missing, Italian media reported on Monday.
The 66-year-old doctor, Elias Kassabij, was carried away by the floodwaters from a swollen stream near the port of Genoa in northwest Italy, while the father of the young patient he had been visiting was rescued.
Emergency workers near the city of Modena were looking for man who reportedly took to a dinghy on a canal amid heavy rain to help some stranded people and fell into the water in the night between Sunday and Monday.
Some 600 people were evacuated from their homes around Modena because of flooding. They were being put up in local hotels or medical facilities, the reports said.
Several roads in the area have been blocked off.
Torrential rains have already caused around 100 landslides and rockfalls in the Liguria region around Genoa, forcing the derailment of a train linking Italy and France on Friday in which two people were injured.