Tornado injures 41 and damages about 300 homes in southwest France

A tornado has torn through the village of Pomas in southwestern France, injuring 41 people and damaging about 300 homes. Local authorities said the storm hit hardest in the Aude department, where some roofs were ripped off houses. The incident came after French authorities issued an orange storm alert for large parts of the southwest.

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Officials said 15 of the injured were taken to hospital, including a pregnant woman who was hurt when her house collapsed. More than 120 emergency workers were deployed to the scene, according to local authorities. The national weather service said winds reached up to 117 km/h in the nearby village of Arquettes-en-Val.

The wider storm system also caused power cuts and transport disruption across southern France. French officials said about 2,800 homes were left without electricity across 10 villages. Train services were delayed, roads were closed, and airports in Bordeaux, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse and Paris reported delays and cancellations, according to the transport minister.

The weather also affected sport in the region, with the third stage of the Vuelta a Espana cycling race cancelled in the Aude department after hail forced riders to seek shelter. The disruption underlines how severe weather can quickly affect multiple parts of daily life at once, from housing and health services to transport and public events. In this case, the damage was concentrated in a small village, but the wider impact spread across a much larger area.

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Pomas is a village of about 1,000 people, which means the damage affected a large share of local homes. The scale of the response suggests authorities were dealing with both immediate safety concerns and the longer task of assessing structural damage. Storm alerts in France are designed to warn of fast-changing conditions, but the events in the southwest show how quickly those warnings can turn into local emergencies.

What remains unclear is the full extent of the damage and whether any of the injured remain in serious condition. It is also not yet clear how long repairs to homes, power supplies and transport links will take. Further updates from local authorities and weather officials are likely to focus on the recovery effort and any additional storm impacts in the region.

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