Rescue crews have been racing to find survivors of floods that have wreaked havoc across western Europe, killing 170 people.

Many people are still missing after record rainfall triggered severe floods in Germany and Belgium, and the death toll is expected to rise further.

Submerged cars are being searched for bodies as flood waters begin to recede.

Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands were also hit. European leaders have blamed climate change.

Experts say global warming makes torrential rainfall more likely.

The world has already warmed by about 1.2C since the industrial era began.

In Germany, where the death toll stands at more than 100, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he was stunned by the devastation ahead of a visit to a flood-hit region on Saturday (local time).

“Whole places are scarred by the disaster,” Steinmeier said at a news conference. “Many people have lost what they have built all their lives.”

Rescue teams in Germany were hampered by difficult conditions on Friday, leaving relatives of the missing waiting anxiously for news.

Authorities said numbers of people unaccounted for had been steadily decreasing.

The states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland have been the worst affected by the rainfall.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, emergency workers have been searching abandoned cars on the still flooded B265 road, but fire service spokesman Elmar Mettke said no bodies had yet been found.

“It seems like in the cars we have checked so far the occupants have all reached dry land unscathed. But we will continue to look and it will be a while until we are done here,” he told Reuters news agency.

A resident of Schuld in the Rhineland-Palatinate district of Ahrweiler told AFP news agency that cars had been washed away and houses knocked down in scenes he likened to a “war zone”.

In the nearby spa town of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler residents were determined to begin the huge clean-up operation, scraping mud from the streets and clearing piles of debris.

But many businesses and livelihoods in the town have been swept away.

Despite the ongoing rescue efforts, people have reportedly been travelling to see the damage, leading the police in Mainz to ask people not to “tour a disaster area” where people had suffered so much loss. Similar warnings have been issued in the Netherlands, according to NOS.com.

-BBC