A pedestrian walks along a flooded street in Milan, Italy, on Saturday. The day's heavy rains triggered flash floods and caused rivers to burst their banks, forcing limited evacuations and the closure of roads and bridges. Italy's Civil Protection Agency (CPA) issued flood alerts for a large swathe of the country, from the western port city of Genoa to the eastern region of Veneto.

A policeman surveys the damage caused after the Cerusa stream, located near Genoa, overflowed on Saturday. The storms that hit the region, located near the Italy-Switzerland border, led to mudslides that swept away houses and, at the time of going to press, had claimed at least four lives and left another missing. Local authorities have called on residents to avoid using vehicles and to stay indoors.

Milan's Garibaldi railway station floods under Saturday's onslaught. The floods and landslides that struck the country are estimated to have caused more than $125 million of damage, and are a continuation of bad weather that has claimed the lives of nine people in northern Italy in just the last month.

People clean the streets after floods in Busalla, near Genoa, on Saturday. The floods also knocked out Genoa's electricity. The weather had improved by Sunday morning, but the CPA nevertheless sent emergency teams, equipped with water pumps and earth-moving equipment, to the city. Photos: IC - AFP