Heavy rain causes chaos in Barcelona as soldiers search for bodies in Valencia

Heavy rains have hit Barcelona prompting authorities to suspend commuter rail services. It comes only days after storms in eastern Spain led to massive flooding last week, killing more than 200 people.

A red alert has been issued for the Catalonia region by Spain’s national weather agency Aemet, remaining in place until Monday afternoon. Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente said he was suspending all commuter trains in north-east Catalonia, a region with a population of eight million, on request from civil protection officials.

Mr Puente said that the rains had forced air traffic controllers to change the course of 15 flights operating at Barcelona’s airport, located on the southern flank of the city. Several major roads have been closed due to flooding.

READ MORE: First picture of British couple killed in Spain floods

Mobile phones in Barcelona issued an alert over “extreme and continued rainfall” on the southern outskirts of the city. The alert urged people to avoid any normally dry gorges or canals.

Classes were cancelled in Tarragona, a city in southern Catalonia about halfway between Barcelona and Valencia, after a red alert for rains was issued. Meanwhile, in Valencia, the search continued for bodies inside houses and thousands of wrecked cars strewn in the streets, on major roads, and in canals that channelled last week’s deluge into populated areas.

Spain's Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, said that authorities can still not give a reliable estimate of the missing. Spanish national television RTVE, however, has broadcast pleas for help by several desperate people whose loved ones are unaccounted for.

In the Aldaia municipality, some 50 soldiers, police and firefighters, some wearing wetsuits, searched in a huge shopping centre's underground parking lot for possible victims. They used a small boat and spotlights to move around in the huge structure with vehicles submerged in at least a metre of murky water.

Police spokesman Ricardo Gutiérrez told reporters that so far some 50 vehicles had been found and no bodies had been discovered there. The Bonaire shopping mall's 1,800 underground parking spaces quickly filled with water and mud on Tuesday and Wednesday when the southern outskirts of Valencia were hit by a tsunami-like flooding. The team is using four pumps to remove the water.

Citizens, volunteers and thousands of soldiers and police officers pressed on with their gargantuan clean-up effort to clear out mud and debris. Many people feel abandoned by authorities, their anger erupting on Sunday when a crowd tossed mud at Spain's royal couple, the prime minister and regional leaders as they made their first visit to Paiporta, where over 60 people died and the survivors have lost their homes and still don't have drinking water.

Spain is used to autumn storms that can lead to flooding, but the latest ones have produced the deadliest flooding in living memory for Spaniards. Climate scientists and meteorologists say the immediate cause of the flooding was a cut-off lower-pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream. It was likely fueled by a record-hot Mediterranean Sea. That system simply parked itself over the region and unleashed a deluge.

The Spanish navy’s “Galicia” transport vessel arrived in Valencia’s port on Monday with marines, helicopters and trucks loaded with food and water to help with the relief effort, which included 7,500 soldiers and thousands of police reinforcements.

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