Merkel to visit affected regions

BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit flood-hit areas of Germany, her spokesman said yesterday, as authorities grapple with days of heavy rainfall that has swelled rivers and sparked emergency measures.
Merkel, facing general elections in less than four months, will go to an as yet unannounced region today to get her "own impression of the situation, of the aid operations, also of the precautions for protecting people and their property," Steffen Seibert told a regular government news conference.
An emergency task force is being set up with input from the interior, defense and finance ministries, he added.
Torrential rain across central Europe has hit many parts of eastern and southern Germany, especially the region of Bavaria, where large parts of the city of Passau in particular have been flooded.
The southern city which has a historic old town and is the point where the Danube is joined by the rivers Inn and Ilz saw the water rise above the levels of the disastrous 1954 floods, officials said.
Rivers have swollen, some bursting their banks, and towns and administrative districts in Bavaria as well as the eastern regions of Thuringia and Saxony have raised the alarm, with thousands of people forced to leave their homes.
The army has also been drafted in to help police, firefighters and other emergency aid personnel.
Merkel was kept informed by the premiers of the affected regions over the weekend, Seibert said.
In 2002, then chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was swift to visit eastern regions.