A rare tornado tore through the south-eastern Czech Republic, killing at least three people and injuring hundreds, rescue services said on Friday. The tornado formed late on Thursday during a series of strong thunderstorms that hit the entire country. Emergency workers and residents combed through wreckage on Friday after the tornado and storm ripped roofs off buildings and overturned cars. Seven towns and villages were badly damaged, with entire buildings reduced to ruins. More than 120,000 households were without electricity. The tornado affected towns around Hodonin, along the Slovak and Austrian borders and 270 kilometres south-east of Prague. Firefighters searched the rubble on Friday while the army sent in a team with heavy engineering equipment to deal with the aftermath of the strongest storm in the central European nation's modern history and its first tornado since 2018. A Czech Television meteorologist said it may have reached windspeeds above 332 kilometres an hour. Rescuers from many parts of the country who came to help were joined by their counterparts from nearby Austria and Slovakia. They were using drones and helicopters to search the rubble. In the village of Hrusky with a population of 1,600, a deputy mayor estimated that a third of the houses were destroyed and many needed inspections before people could safely return. "Part of the village is levelled, only the perimeter walls without roofs, without windows remain," Marek Babisz told news site <i>iDNES</i>. "The church has no roof, it has no tower, cars were hurled at family houses, people had nowhere to hide. The village from the church down practically ceased to exist," he said. A spokesperson for the South Moravia region's ambulance service told Czech Television three people died in the storms while hundreds were reported injured. Officials said the storm destroyed thousands of homes and appealed to people not to drive to the affected areas so rescue services could work, urging them to send donations instead. More than 100 residents of an elderly home in Hodonin had to be evacuated. “It’s a huge tragedy,” Prime Minister Andrej Babis said. Mr Babis cut short his attendance at the European Council summit in Brussels to visit the area where electricity and water remained shut off in a number of villages.
