In the Swiss capital, Berne, police said most of the 1,100 residents of the old quarter, evacuated for fear the centuries-old buildings could collapse, were being allowed back, although water and electricity supplies had not been restored.

"The flood risk has receded, but there is an awful lot of clearing up to do," said Berne police spokesman Franz Maerki.

In southern Germany, hastily constructed dams on the river Danube prevented serious flood damage in the city of Regensburg, but parts of the old centre of Passau were still under water.

Some 30,000 people were involved in cleaning up and working to prevent further flooding, with around 1.5 million sand bags still in place across the region.

Heavy rain overnight in the southern Austrian provinces of Styria and Carinthia caused more landslides and flooding, though there were no reports of casualties.

Roads to popular mountain resorts in the western province of Tyrol reopened, though many routes remained closed to trucks and other heavy vehicles. The Austrian government estimates the damage at hundreds of million of euros.

Power and telephone connections were expected to be restored in all of the mountainous province by Saturday night, Austrian news agency APA reported.

In Switzerland, the main route through the Alps, the Gotthard tunnel, reopened to road traffic after being closed for five days. But some Alpine villages remained cut off.

Pensioners in the village of Klosters, a ski village frequented by Britain's Prince Charles, were still holed up in a hotel after their care home was flooded and hundreds of tourists in the mountain resort of Engelberg spent a sixth day cut off from the rest of Switzerland.

More rain was forecast for Switzerland, but without the intensity of earlier in the week. It would fall mainly south of the Alps in the Italian-speaking Ticino region which was spared the earlier deluge.