Australia | Unprecedented floods kill six

(Sydney) At least six people have died in floods triggered by decades-long downpours in eastern Australia, which have been raging since the start of the week and are heading south, officials said. authorities on Sunday.

Queensland State Police say a 34-year-old man died after his car was swept away by floodwaters around 3.30pm GMT on Sunday.

The man managed to escape from the vehicle and attempted to swim to safety. His body was found shortly after, bringing the death toll from the floods to six.

Huge downpours have been battering eastern Australia for nearly a week, submerging entire buildings, flooding roads and washing away cars.

Adrian Schrinner, Mayor of Brisbane, described the weather phenomenon as a “bomb shower over southeast Queensland”.

Queensland State Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has urged Brisbane residents to stay at home as downpours headed towards the south of the state, where many residential areas are located, on Sunday.

More than 1,400 homes in Brisbane are at risk from floodwaters, she warned, while more than 300mm of rainfall has been recorded in some areas in the past 24 hours.

Police are continuing to search for a man in his 70s who fell into the Brisbane river on Friday.

After several years of drought and bushfires exacerbated by climate change, eastern Australia experienced an extraordinarily wet summer, due to La Niña, a climatic phenomenon originating from a thermal anomaly of the equatorial surface waters of the Pacific Ocean.