Speaking after a meeting of the national security council that he had called, Fischer said 1000 troops had been mobilised to clean up after the flooding in the east of the country.

He said the government would also allocate 54 million koruna (2.1 million euros) to begin with to aid the affected areas.

"The water level is stabilising and the situation is now under control, thanks to the efforts of regional and local crisis teams," Fischer told a press conference.

He said nine people had been killed, including five drowned in rising floodwaters as rivers burst their banks, and several were still missing.

"Rescue work ended on Thursday morning and work on clearing up began immediately," Fischer added.

Earlier, emergency services gave a total of eight dead, while hundreds of people were evacuated as villages were cut off and houses swept away, while forecasters said more bad weather was on the way.

A 55-year-old woman was swept away by a swollen river at Novy Jicin and three other people, including two brothers who were trying to save their mother, drowned in the village of Jesenik nad Odrou, police spokesman Miroslava Michalkova-Salkova said.

A man of 46 drowned near Novy Jicin, while rescuers discovered the body of a man who had been reported missing near Hranice.

A further two died after suffering suspected heart attacks and could not be treated on time because of the floods, fire service spokesman Petr Kudela said.

"Several houses in Jesenik nad Odrou were washed away by the floodwaters. In one building, firefighters saved about 20 people," he added.

"It happened very quickly, people had no time to do anything," the mayor of the village of Belotin, Eduard Kavala, told CTK news agency.

About 2000 people were left without gas because of a damaged gas pipeline close to a swollen river, while stretches of railway line have also been closed, train company CD said.

Bad weather also hit neighbouring southern Poland, where flood alerts were declared and some 50 people were evacuated near Krakow, while train services were disrupted when the station at Czechowice-Dziedzice in Upper Silesia was inundated.

Some 900 hectares of agricultural land were under water, local authorities said.

The eastern Czech region of Moravia was hit by devastating floods in 1997 that claimed 48 lives while Poland suffered the worst flood in living memory which claimed 54 lives, forced the evacuation of more than 160 000 people and caused billions of euros in damage in the southwest.

AFP

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