Spanish king cuts visit to flood-hit town short after being hit by mud

Spain's king and queen have cut short their visit to a flood-hit town after an angry crowd pelted them with mud, according to AFP reporters at the scene.

Hundreds of residents of a Valencia suburb particularly badly hit by last week's deadly floods protested during a visit by Spanish King Felipe and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Chanting "Murderers, murderers!" they vented pent-up anger over what has been widely perceived by local residents as tardy alerts from the authorities about the dangers of Tuesday's storm and flooding in the Valencia region, and then a late response by the emergency services when disaster struck.

"It was known and nobody did anything to avoid it," a young man told the king, who insisted on staying on to talk to the people despite the turmoil, while the prime minister had withdrawn.

At one point in the visit to the stricken suburb of Paiporta, Felipe held a man who was crying on his shoulder.

The crowd's ire appeared to be directed mostly at Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the head of the Valencia region, Carlos Mazon.

The central government has said issuing alerts to the population is the responsibility of regional authorities.

The Valencia authorities have said they acted as best as they could with the information available to them.

The death toll from the country's worst flash floods in modern history edged higher to 217 today - almost all in the Valencia region and over 60 of them in Paiporta alone.

Hopes of finding survivors ebbed five days after torrents of muddy water wrecked towns and infrastructure in Spain's worst such disaster in decades.

In a televised statement, Mr Sanchez said yesterday that the government was sending 5,000 more army troops to help with the searches and clean-up in addition to 2,500 soldiers already deployed.

"It is the biggest operation by the armed forces in Spain in peacetime," Mr Sanchez said. "The government is going to mobilize all the resources necessary as long as they are needed."

Valencian regional authorities said last night the total number of fatalities in the region was 211, plus two from Castilla La Mancha and one in Andalusia.

The tragedy is already Europe's worst flood-related disaster since 1967 when at least 500 people died in Portugal.

Volunteers flocked to Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences centre yesterday for the first coordinated clean-up organised by regional authorities.

The venue has been turned into the nerve centre for the operation.

In Valencia's Picanya suburb, shop-owner Emilia, 74, told Reuters: "We feel abandoned, there are many people who need help. It is not only my house, it's all the houses and we are throwing away furniture, we are throwing away everything.

"When is the help going to come to have fridges and washing machines? Because we can't even wash our clothes and we can't even have a shower."

Nurse Maria Jose Gilabert, 52, who also lives in Picanya, said: "We are devastated because there is not much light to be seen here at the moment, not because they are not coming to help, they are coming from all over Spain, but because it will be a long time before this becomes a habitable area again."

The storm triggered a new weather alert in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia, where rains are expected to continue during the weekend.

Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent in Europe, and elsewhere, due to climate change. Meteorologists think the warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe.