Heavy rain in Barcelona disrupts train services as troops search for more victims of flooding in Valencia

BARCELONA, Spain — Repeated storms in eastern Spain that have led to Massive flooding last week killed at least 217 peoplemainly near Valencia, rain lashed Barcelona on Monday, forcing authorities to suspend commuter rail services.

Spain’s Transport Minister Oscar Puente said he was suspending all commuter trains in northeastern Catalonia, a region of 8 million people, at the request of civil defense officials.

Mobile phones in Barcelona were beeping, warning of “extreme and continuous rain” on the southern outskirts of the city. The warning urged people to avoid any normally dry gorges or canals.

Puente said the rains forced air traffic controllers to divert 15 flights operating at Barcelona’s airport, located on the city’s southern slope.

Several highways are closed due to flooding.

In Tarragona, a city in southern Catalonia about halfway between Barcelona and Valencia, classes were canceled after a red warning was issued for rain.

Meanwhile, in Valencia, the search continues for bodies in houses and thousands of wrecked cars scattered on the streets, highways and canals that directed the floods last week in populated areas.

Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlasca said that the authorities still cannot give a reliable estimate of the missing. Spain’s national broadcaster RTVE, however, broadcast pleas for help from several desperate people whose loved ones were missing.

In the municipality of Aldaya, about 50 soldiers, police and firefighters, some in wetsuits, searched for possible victims in the underground car park of a huge shopping mall. They used a small boat and searchlights to navigate the huge structure with vehicles submerged in at least a meter of muddy water.

Police spokesman Ricardo Gutierrez told reporters that so far about 50 cars have been recovered and no bodies have been found there.

The Bonaire shopping center’s 1,800 underground parking spaces quickly filled with water and mud on Tuesday and Wednesday as the southern outskirts of Valencia were hit by tsunami-like flooding. The team uses four pumps to remove the water.

Citizens, volunteers and thousands of soldiers and police pressed them a gigantic effort to clean up the dirt and garbage

Many people feel abandoned by the authorities, their anger erupted on Sunday when a the crowd threw mud at the Spanish royal couple, the prime minister and regional leaders when they made their first visit to Paiporta, where more than 60 people died those who survived lost their homes and still have no drinking water.

Spain is used to autumn storms that can lead to floods, but the latest one led to the worst flooding in Spanish memory.

Climatologists and meteorologists say immediate cause of flooding was a disconnected low pressure storm system migrating from an extremely wavy and stalled jet stream. This was probably caused by the record hot Mediterranean Sea. This system simply parked over the region and caused the deluge.

The Spanish Navy transport ship Galicia arrived in the port of Valencia on Monday with marines, helicopters and trucks loaded with food and water to help with the relief effort, which included 7,500 soldiers and thousands of police reinforcements.