Rhineland-Palatinate

At today's meeting, the caretaker government decided to open consulates of Bulgaria in the German city of Dusseldorf and in the French city of Lyon, a new consulate in the Scottish city of Edinburgh, as well as an honorary consulate in Singapore.

More than 90 people were killed and 618 others were injured in the Ahrweiler district in Germany's southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate as a result of floods, Koblenz police said on Saturday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her condolences to the victims of "the catastrophe, the scale of which will only be seen in the coming days."
More than 1.000 rescuers are helping the area, while authorities say it is too early to determine the extent of the damage.

 The death toll from floods caused by heavy rains in the western German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia rose to 45, media reported.

German emergency responders were on July 16 still searching for hundreds of missing people after the worst floods in living memory killed more than 80 in the country's west.

"I fear that we will only see the full extent of the disaster in the coming days," Chancellor Angela Merkel said from Washington, where she met with President Joe Biden.