Soldiers and firefighters used sandbags to reinforce river embankments and delivered food and drinking water to cut-off communities as the worst flooding in years moved across Central Europe, taking lives and destroying homes.

Authorities are also taking precautions with mobile flood protection walls set up in some areas to protect cities.

Heavy flooding has affected a large part of the region in recent days, including the Czech Republic, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia and Poland. 

Around 20 deaths were reported in the flooding, which followed heavy rainfall but the full human cost was still not clear.