Eight people died, 17 were missing and thousands were evacuated Sunday from floods and landslides in rain-lashed southern Switzerland, France and northern Italy.
Seven people died in Italy and one in the French Mediterranean island of Corsica. A huge wave hit a group of sailors in the western port of Savona killing one of them, a Filipino, port authorities said Sunday.
Two others were swept away and four injured.
But the worst single incident occurred in Switzerland, where a landslide measuring 40 meters (yards) across cut the southwestern village of Gondo in two sweeping about 10 buildings away, police said.
Thirteen people from the village were missing but it was unclear whether they had been buried or were simply absent at the time of the disaster on Saturday morning, they said.
Rescue workers said Saturday that torrents of water appeared to have burst a retaining wall in the village.
The search resumed Sunday afternoon after an almost 24-hour break when conditions were deemed safe enough for rescuers to continue looking.
The Swiss army is helping, and Swiss President Adolf Ogi also rushed to the scene to offer support to local people.
Three people were hurt in the incident, one of the worst to result from heavy rainfall in the area which connects the Swiss town of Brig in the Rhone valley with Domodossola in Italy via the Simplon pass, which remains closed.
In the upper part of the Rhone valley where about 7,000 hectares are under water two people were missing near the town of Brig.
"We've never seen the Rhone like that. It's the flood of the century," said a resident of the valley to an AFP journalist.
An early estimation cited by Swiss ATS news agency put the total cost of the flood damage at six billion Swiss francs (3.98 billion euros, 3.44 billion dollars).
Evacuations have been carried out in several villages and districts. The town of Brig was totally cut off Sunday evening, while the Saltina river which runs into the Rhone is also swollen.
The region last suffered considerable flooding in 1993.
In the town of Sierre Sunday, a rail bridge was in danger of giving way under the pressure of the water.
On the Italian side, a seven-year-old girl drowned after the bank of the Stura river near Turin in the northern Piemonte region collapsed, weakened by the rise in water, the local authorities said.
Three people were killed in a mudslide in the village of Fenis near Aoste and two others are missing, according to the Italian Ansa new agency.
The floods claimed two others victims in the Valle D'Aosta -- a 15-year-old teenager near Pollein and an elderly man found drowned in the cellar of a house in Dora di Aoste.
A number of people are also missing after two houses were carried away by the Dora river. The Valle d'Aosta has been cut off from the rest of the country since Saturday evening.
French firefighters were due to go to Valle D'Aosta to help those stranded.
About 2,000 people including Swiss who wanted to return home were blocked in different parts of the Val d'Aosta. Thousands were being evacuated from Piemonte. 2,500 people were in the course of leaving the region of Monferrato Sunday evening.
The water level in the Lago Maggiore rose 52 centimeters (15.8 inches) overnight, and is rising by four centimetres an hour.
Mudslides have particulary hit the Orco and Soana valleys and the region of Noasca and Ronco Canavese where telephone and electricity lines have been cut in some villages.
In Corsica, a shepherd was found drowned Saturday afternoon in a tributary of the Restonica after heavy rain, firefighters said.
Southeastern France was also caught.
Roads were cut off overnight in the mainland Savoie region and access to the Mont-Cenis pass connecting France and Italy was still blocked Sunday because of mudslides on the Italian side, police said -- GONDO, Switzerland (AFP)
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