29 dead in historic storms and floods in Italy


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Strong winds and heavy rains devastated parts of Italy.

With the death of 12 people in Sicily, the number of victims of historic floods in Italy rose to 29, said the country's interior minister.

"Twelve dead in Sicily, people who dined and were swept away by the waters," Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said in a statement to the press in the northern region of Veneto.

Nine people belonged to two families who were dining together when the house was submerged by the water from a nearby river that spilled over suddenly, the fire brigade announced on Twitter.

Firefighters said on Twitter that their divers had found the bodies. The victims included two children aged 1 and 3 years.

The Civil Protection Agency said it was still looking for a doctor who was going to work in a hospital Saturday night and is now missing.

Strong winds and heavy rains have devastated parts of the country during the past week, causing the worst flooding in Venice for at least a decade, with damage of more than one billion euros (1, $ 14 billion) in Veneto and landslides that cut villages, authorities said.

The situation in Sicily is "dramatic," Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Sunday.

The president will convene a council of ministers to announce the state of emergency in the affected regions, he said at a press conference in Palermo, Sicily.

The Italian civil protection agency continues to monitor the situation by issuing weather warnings via Twitter, while volunteers from the Italian Red Cross are working to bring relief to the population.

Many of the deaths last week were caused by tree falls up to 190 kilometers an hour, including the famous "Forest of Fiddles", which provided wood for the instruments of luthier Antonio Stradivarius.

Two young people died south of Rome when a tree hit their car. Another was hit by a falling tree while he was walking to Naples.

About 300,000 trees have been razed by the winds in the Val d'Assa on the Asiago plateau, Roberto Ciambetti, president of the Regional Council of Veneto, told CNN.

"Tens of thousands of big trees have been cut down like toothpicks," he said.

Much of Venice was under water while high winds drove high tide to one of the highest levels ever recorded.

St. Mark's Square has become a lake and flood waters have spread over the ancient marble floors of St. Mark's Basilica.

"In a single day, the basilica is 20 years old, but that may be an optimistic consideration," said Carlo Alberto Tesserin, chairman of the board of directors responsible for St. Mark's Basilica, in a statement.

The flood waters also covered several tens of square meters of the 1000-year-old marble pavement located in front of the altar of the Madonna Nicopeia, an icon of the twelfth century, and submerged the baptistery and the Zen chapel, Tesserin said. .

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