The re­cur­rent storms in east­ern Spain that led to mas­sive flood­ing last week and killed at least 217 peo­ple, most­ly near Va­len­cia, dumped rain on Barcelona on Mon­day, prompt­ing au­thor­i­ties to sus­pend com­muter rail ser­vice.

Span­ish Trans­port Min­is­ter Ós­car Puente said he was sus­pend­ing all com­muter trains in north­east Cat­alo­nia, a re­gion with 8 mil­lion peo­ple, on re­quest from civ­il pro­tec­tion of­fi­cials.

Mo­bile phones in Barcelona screeched with an alert for “ex­treme and con­tin­ued rain­fall” on the south­ern out­skirts of the city. The alert urged peo­ple to avoid any nor­mal­ly dry gorges or canals.

Puente said that the rains had forced air traf­fic con­trollers to change the course of 15 flights op­er­at­ing at Barcelona’s air­port, lo­cat­ed on the south­ern flank of the city.

Sev­er­al high­ways have been closed due to flood­ing.

Class­es were can­celled in Tar­rag­o­na, a city in south­ern Cat­alo­nia about halfway be­tween Barcelona and Va­len­cia, af­ter a red alert for rains was is­sued.

Mean­while, in Va­len­cia, the search con­tin­ued for bod­ies in­side hous­es and thou­sands of wrecked cars strewn in the streets, on high­ways, and in canals that chan­nelled last week’s floods in­to pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas.

Spain’s In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Fer­nan­do Grande-Mar­las­ka said that au­thor­i­ties can still not give a re­li­able es­ti­mate of the miss­ing. Span­ish na­tion­al tele­vi­sion RTVE, how­ev­er, has broad­cast pleas for help by sev­er­al des­per­ate peo­ple whose loved ones are un­ac­count­ed for.

In the Al­da­ia mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty, some 50 sol­diers, po­lice and fire­fight­ers, some wear­ing wet­suits, searched in a huge shop­ping cen­tre’s un­der­ground park­ing lot for pos­si­ble vic­tims. They used a small boat and spot­lights to move around in the huge struc­ture with ve­hi­cles sub­merged in at least a me­ter of murky wa­ter.

Po­lice spokesman Ri­car­do Gutiér­rez told re­porters that so far some 50 ve­hi­cles had been found and no bod­ies had been dis­cov­ered there.

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

Cit­i­zens, vol­un­teers and thou­sands of sol­diers and po­lice of­fi­cers pressed on with their gar­gan­tu­an clean-up ef­fort to clear out mud and de­bris.

Many peo­ple feel aban­doned by au­thor­i­ties, their anger erupt­ing on Sun­day when a crowd tossed mud at Spain’s roy­al cou­ple, the prime min­is­ter and re­gion­al lead­ers as they made their first vis­it to Paipor­ta, where over 60 peo­ple died and the sur­vivors have lost their homes and still don’t have drink­ing wa­ter.

Spain is used to au­tumn storms that can lead to flood­ing, but the lat­est ones have pro­duced the dead­liest flood­ing in liv­ing mem­o­ry for Spaniards.

Cli­mate sci­en­tists and me­te­o­rol­o­gists say the im­me­di­ate cause of the flood­ing was a cut-off low­er-pres­sure storm sys­tem that mi­grat­ed from an un­usu­al­ly wavy and stalled jet stream. It was like­ly fu­elled by a record-hot Mediter­ranean Sea. That sys­tem sim­ply parked it­self over the re­gion and un­leashed a del­uge.

The Span­ish navy’s “Gali­cia” trans­port ves­sel ar­rived in Va­len­cia’s port 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. —BARCELONA, Spain (AP)

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Sto­ry by JOSEPH WIL­SON | As­so­ci­at­ed Press