A tornado ripped through a small village in southern France, damaging about 300 homes, destroying several cars and injuring dozens of people, authorities said.
The tornado struck Pomas, a village of about 1000 people, on Monday and rescue teams continued their search through ruins on Tuesday local time, though no people were immediately reported missing.
Authorities said that 39 people were injured. Alain Bucquet, the head of the local government office, later said 20 of them were hospitalised, with none of them in critical condition as of Tuesday evening. Authorities opened emergency accommodation centres to house displaced residents.
Bucquet said the Pomas school was partially destroyed, but assured residents that the town's children would be able to attend classes in surrounding municipalities starting on the first day of the school year in September.
In the broader Aude department, about 1400 households were still without electricity on Tuesday morning, officials said.
The region was under a thunderstorm alert at the time of the tornado, with wind gusts exceeding 100km/h recorded at a nearby meteorological station. The third stage of the Vuelta a Espana bike race, which was held in southern France on Monday, was halted because of hail.
According to Meteo France, the national weather agency, a few dozen tornadoes occur each year in mainland France, most of them of low intensity.
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