Visit www.weatheronline.co.uk - the UK's most comprehensive internet weather

VIENNA - Rescue workers struggled Tuesday to contain floods that left a trail of death and destruction across parts of central Europe, as parched Spain and Portugal in contrast battled dozens of raging wildfires.

Two people were killed and two others reported missing after three days of torrential downpours in central and eastern Switzerland turned Alpine streams into raging torrents and triggered flooding around the country's lakes.

It brought the confirmed death toll in Switzerland to four, after two fire fighters were killed in a landslide Sunday near Lucerne. Floods also hit Austria, where two people have died, Bulgaria and southern Germany, hitting roads, homes, railways and tourist spots.

In Switzerland, roads and railways through the Alps were cut, helicopters helped evacuate mountain homes and campsites, and schools were closed in many areas, the authorities said, although water levels were later reported to be stabilising.

Low-lying neighbourhoods of the capital, Bern, were partly underwater after the river Aare exceeded record levels set during floods in 1999. About 2,500 people, including some tourists, have been granted temporary shelter in civil defence facilities or hotels in villages and towns in several areas over the past two days.

In Germany, flooding was worst surrounding the popular Alpine ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria. The town, where 105 liters per cubic metre fell overnight, was almost completely cut off when the Partnach dam burst, turning the main road into a surging river and flooding hundreds of cellars.

We're in a state of chaos! said Bernd Putzer, the local police spokesman in Garmisch, adding that rescue workers were having problems getting to the area.

All train traffic between Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the regional capital Munich was suspended and more than 1,000 firefighters, troops and police were sent to that area alone to reinforce local rescue services.

Emergency warnings were also issued in three other parts of the state. In neighbouring Austria, one person was found dead in the western region of Tyrol, apparently killed in a rockslide, and nine were injured in Vorarlberg, also in the west, including six when flood waters set off an explosion in their house for as yet unclear reasons. Two others are missing.

Some 450 soldiers have been mobilized to help out firemen in the west and south of the country. In Styria, in the south, a 50-year-old woman died Monday when her home was hit by floodwaters.

Waters continued to rise Tuesday in rivers in Vorarlberg and Tyrol, after heavy rain overnight cut telephone service and made many roads unpassable. In Bulgaria, the death toll climbed to 26 since June after torrential rains flooded the northwestern region of Montana and a man was killed by lightning.

But it was a far different story in Portugal and Spain, ravaged by wildfires and the worst drought since the mid-1940s. Nearly 3,000 firefighters and soldiers battled dozens of blazes in Portugal and police found the charred body an elderly woman near her rural home.

Eleven fires raged out of control in the centre and north of the country but firefighters said that Coimbra, the nation's third-largest city, was no longer under threat from flames due to a change in wind direction. The agriculture ministry said most of the country faced either a "maximum" or "very high" risk of wildfires.

Portuguese forces were backed by nine firefighting planes and helicopters rushed in from five fellow European Union nations -- France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands -- after Lisbon appealed for help.

Police said they had detained seven people, including two minors, suspected of setting fires, raising the number of suspected arsonists held this year so far to 105.

In Spain's northwestern Galicia province, firefighters battled 24 blazes, including one that has burned for three days near Santiago de Compostela. On Tuesday, the Spanish interior ministry said fires across the country had killed 17 people and forced the evacuation of 2,786.