Four Children Die During Spanish Gales

`It was horrific`, Jose Antonio Godina, a parent, was quoted by El Mundo newspaper as saying at the sports centre.

Four children were killed when the roof of a sports centre collapsed during high winds in Sant Boi near Barcelona on Saturday, emergency services said.

Four adults died elsewhere in northern Spain as high winds battered the region and southwest France for a second day, cutting power, disrupting flights and blocking roads.

"It was horrific," Jose Antonio Godina, a parent, was quoted by El Mundo newspaper as saying at the sports centre.

"We heard a loud noise and we thought a tree had fallen on a roof. But when we got here, the roof of the annex had literally flown off and the walls had fallen in on them."

Up to 30 children were inside the building when it collapsed, local authorities said. Catalonian emergency services said four children had died and nine people had been injured.

A policeman was killed by a falling tree in Galicia, northern Spain in the early hours of Saturday, a police spokesman said. A 51-year-old man was killed by a falling wall in Alicante, local authorities said.

A 52-year-old woman was also killed as a wall collapsed on her as she walked down a street in Barcelona, newspapers said and another man was killed by a falling tree, media reported.

In France, gales cut power supplies to more than one million homes and closed roads, railways and airports. Local authorities in the Landes region said one person was killed and one seriously injured when a tree fell on a car.

French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier said the storm was "the worst since 1999" and said France would call on the European Union to help fund reconstruction efforts once the extent of the damage becomes clear.

Winds of up to 173 km an hour (108 miles an hour) on the coast and 160 km an hour inland paralysed southwest France. The French weather agency Meteo France placed the region under red alert and asked residents to stay indoors for their own safety.

"Stay at home and avoid any outdoor activity. If you must go out, use extreme caution," it said in a statement.

French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said she had ordered that 700 extra security forces be sent to the region to help with rescue efforts and that extra equipment also be sent to help clear roads and electric lines.

ROADS, BRIDGES AIRPORTS CLOSED

The road traffic agency issued a list of roads and bridges blocked by fallen trees or too dangerous to use. These included the Aquitaine suspension bridge across the Garonne river at Bordeaux and bridges to the offshore islands of Re and Oleron.

The airports at Bordeaux, Biarritz, Pau and Toulouse were closed, officials said.

Spanish authorities warned people to stay away from beaches and harbours as eight-metre (26-foot) waves pounded the coast. The northern province of Cantabria and the Catalonia region in the northeast remained on alert because of high winds.

A liquefied natural gas tanker operated by Gaz de France, the Provalys, was in difficulties off the French coast with a technical problem making it hard to cope with the conditions, but a company spokesman said it was under control.

The national power grid manager, Electricite Reseau Distribution France, said nearly 1.2 million homes were cut off.

"Access to certain parts of the grid that are affected by the bad weather is particularly difficult because of fallen trees," ERDF said in a statement.

A huge storm in 1999 killed 88 people in France and left nearly 4 million people without electricity. It took more than three weeks for ERDF to restore power to all clients.

"It is likely that this storm will affect a smaller geographical area than in December 1999 but it is expected to be of a similar intensity," Meteo France said.

The French state railway company SNCF said it had been forced to halt services completely in the Aquitaine and Midi-Pyrenees regions, and asked travellers to postpone their journeys. It said high-speed TGV trains from Bordeaux had been stopped because of an electrical fault caused by the storm.