Several dead, missing as storm lashes eastern and central Europe

One person has drowned in Poland and an Austrian fireman has died responding to floods, authorities said on Sunday, as Storm Boris lashed central and eastern Europe with torrential rains.

Since Sept. 12, swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been hit by high winds and unusually fierce rainfall.

The storm had already caused the death of four people in Romania, and thousands have been evacuated from their homes across the continent.

"We have the first confirmed death by drowning, in the Klodzko region" on the Polish-Czech border, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Sunday morning.

Tusk was traveling through the southwest of the country, which has been hit hardest by the floods.

Around 1,600 people have been evacuated in Klodzko, and Polish authorities have called in the army to support firefighters on the scene.

Separately, a fireman in northeastern Austria died in floods in the Lower Austria region, which has been classified as a natural disaster zone.

"Unfortunately a firefighter has died while responding to the flooding," Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the governor of Lower Austria, told reporters on Sunday.

Emergency services had made nearly 5,000 interventions overnight in the state of Lower Austria, where flooding had trapped many residents in their homes.

Polish authorities shut the Golkowice border crossing with the Czech Republic after a river flooded its banks on Saturday, as well as closing several roads and halting trains on the line linking the towns of Prudnik and Nysa.

In the Czech Republic, police reported four people were missing on Sunday.

Three were in a car that was swept into a river in the northeastern town of Lipova-Lazne, and another...