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Heavy rains led to flooding Wednesday in some parts of northern Germany, forcing some evacuations and prompting residents to pile sandbags in front of their homes to protect themselves from a swollen river.

The center of the town of Goslar, in the mountainous Harz region of northern Germany, west of Berlin, was closed off and a hotel and a home for the elderly were evacuated as its central market square was flooded.

Elsewhere, streets were flooded and basements had to be pumped dry of water in the Harz region, and two stretches of railway lines were closed.

In nearby Hildesheim, people stacked sand bags along the banks of the swelling Innerste River. The fire department in Hildesheim was ready to evacuate more than 1,000 people from a neighborhood threatened by the flooding, the German news agency dpa reported.

Topics Flood