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Floods in Spain: 10,000 soldiers and police go to Valencia
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Floods in Spain: 10,000 soldiers and police go to Valencia

MADRID-

Spain is sending 5,000 soldiers and 5,000 additional police officers to the eastern region of Valencia after this week’s deadly floods killed more than 200 people, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced Saturday.

So far, 205 bodies have been found – 202 in Valencia, two in neighboring Castile-La Mancha and one in the southern Andalusia – in Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory .

Rescuers were still searching for bodies in stranded cars and waterlogged buildings on Saturday, four days after monstrous flash floods swept away everything in their path in eastern Spain. An unknown number of people remain missing.

Thousands of volunteers are helping to clean thick mud from the streets, homes and businesses of the hardest-hit cities.

Currently, some 2,000 soldiers are participating in emergency operations, as well as nearly 2,500 gendarmes from the Civil Guard – who carried out 4,500 rescue operations during the floods – and 1,800 national police officers.