Athens has been hit by extreme flash flooding, with restaurant tables and chairs swept along streets by torrents of muddy water as a major storm wreaked havoc across south-eastern Europe.
People in the Greek capital were swept away by the powerful floodwaters, with video emerging of one woman trying to hold onto a metal post as she was dragged down the street outside a metro station in the Kolonaki area. Passers-by tried to grab her hands.
In Plaka, a historic district located directly beneath the imposing cliffs of the Acropolis, the floodwaters roared down flights of stone steps.
A few hundred yards away in the Monastiraki area, tourists watched as metal tables and chairs were dragged down streets by the sheer force of the water. Some metro stations were forced to close because of the flooding and the nearby port of Piraeus was also hit by flash floods, with cars left almost underwater.
The wild weather was caused by Storm Daniel, which lashed the island of Skiathos and parts of the mainland on Tuesday and Wednesday. The storm headed south, causing mayhem in Athens and many parts of central Greece.
In villages around the town of Karditsa, which sits in a low-lying plain in the region of Thessaly, residents had to clamber onto the roofs of their houses on Thursday as the floodwaters rose.
Others waded through water that came up to their chests, and three elderly people were carried to safety in the front bucket of a bulldozer.
Soldiers equipped with rubber dinghies rescued people from farms and villages. Teams using divers and lifeboats were trying to reach dozens of flooded villages after more than a year’s worth of rainfall in 24 hours.
“It’s very difficult to reach them,” said Yannis Artopios, a fire service spokesman.
Officials said they had found the body of a shepherd who had been washed away by the floodwaters earlier in the week, bringing the death toll in Greece to four.
“It is literally a sea. We need help, for someone to come and get us. We are in the community office, on the roof. We don’t know what to do. We don’t have water, we don’t have food,” one local resident told the Greek television channel Alpha.
Giorgos Sakellariou, the mayor of Palamas, said dozens of people were trapped inside their homes by the floodwater, which in some places was more than 6ft deep. “The inhabitants are trapped in their homes without any help,” he said.
The flooding in Athens comes after a baking hot summer in which the Acropolis at times had to be closed during the hottest parts of the day to ensure the safety of visitors.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the prime minister, postponed an annual economic speech scheduled for this weekend and will instead visit areas hit by the bad weather.
“Our country is facing, for the third day, a phenomenon unlike any other we have seen in the past,” said Pavlos Marinakis, a government spokesman.
Since Monday, Storm Daniel has triggered landslides, destroyed roads and carried away dozens of cars, particularly in the mainland port city of Volos and the surrounding mountainous Pelion area.
The wild weather has also affected neighbouring Bulgaria and Turkey.
Rescuers in Turkey recovered the body of a missing man on Thursday, bringing the death toll to eight.
Torrential rain hit the northern stretches of Istanbul, where two people died, as well as parts of Kirklareli province on Tuesday, sweeping away shops and tourist bungalows.