One year's rain in three hours

BARI - At least six people were killed as torrential rain battered southern Italy, demolishing a bridge, sweeping away cars and derailing a Eurostar train.

About 20 passengers were injured when six carriages of a Taranto to Milan train were derailed near Bari as a landslide swept away earth beneath the tracks, leaving one carriage overhanging a chasm.

Three members of a family were killed as their car plunged into a ravine when a bridge collapsed near Bari, the capital of the Apulia region.

Also near the city, two men drowned as their cars were swept away by floods of water and mud.

Civil defence chief Guido Bertolaso said the deluge was an "exceptional climatic event which can only happen once in a hundred years".

"In just three hours in a limited area we had 161mm of rain - as much as the Apulia region gets in a whole year."

Civil defence officials said many roads and houses in the area had been flooded and olive groves and farms were submerged.

- REUTERS