Seventeen people were still missing. Most were believed carried away or buried when mud and water swept through Alpine towns and villages in northern Italy and southern Switzerland at the weekend onset of the flooding.
Wednesday's worry was for residents of the northern plains along the paths of the Po, Italy's longest river.
About 500 people were evacuated in the countryside around the ancient city of Mantua, where the flood crest was expected to arrive later in the day.
Authorities opened dikes to ease the threat from the Po, which at points burst its banks. Some riverbanks had been reinforced and raised after a massive flood hit the area in 1994.
The evacuation in Mantua followed that of about 15,000 people along the Po and the Ticino, which feeds into the Po from the Alps. In the Roman-era Lombard town of Pavia, Ticino waters Tuesday lapped at the third floors of evacuated palazzos.
In the early hours Wednesday, the crest reached the city of Cremona __ an agricultural center noted for its enduring ancient brick buildings __ inundating the homes of people who had been evacuated in advance. The ANSA news agency said two people who refused to leave their home were trapped inside.
The Po divides the rich agricultural regions of Lombardy and Emilia Romagna, emptying into the lagoons of Venice. On Tuesday, it hit its highest level in at least a half-century; its height at Piacenza was the highest ever recorded there.
While there has been some flooding of churches, where much of Italy's cultural heritage is stored, the water generally has not yet threatened works of art, said Vincenzo Pandolfino of the Culture Ministry's art-protection squad. Damage to Italy's countless masterpieces was not expected to approach that which Florence suffered in a ruinous 1966 flood.
In both countries, however, authorities said overall damage would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Fiat auto giant kept two of its biggest plants shut down for a third day Wednesday. The plants, in the automaker's Turin hometown, employ about 10,000 workers. Cutoff roads and railways and inundated factories made it impossible for suppliers to deliver parts.
The floods and landslides started Saturday in southern Switzerland and northern Italy, after days of pounding rain across the region. Flood water roaring out of the Alps brought Lake Maggiore on the Swiss-Italian border to its highest level in 160 years.
In his weekly audience in St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul II sent his condolences to those hit by the floods.
"I ensure a heartfelt prayer ... for the victims and their relatives, for those who lost their homes and for all those suffering for this natural disaster," said the pontiff, who often vacations in Val D'Aosta.
Italy has logged 23 of the confirmed deaths, with eight in Switzerland. The four days of flooding spreading south from Switzerland have forced a total of 43,000 Italians from their homes, the civil defense agency said.
In Gondo, Switzerland, rescuers were digging to find the nine people missing when a landslide roared through the mountain pass village.Late Tuesday, helicopters rescued 69 Boy Scouts and chaperons who had been trapped in Italy's Alps since Saturday morning.
As waters receded upstream and rain stopped falling, residents began returning to homes in Turin and elsewhere.
Authorities temporarily reopened the Alpine Mont Blanc tunnel, closed since a 1999 fire that killed 39 people, to allow trucks carrying humanitarian aid from France through.
(AP)
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