Teenager washed away as fierce seas lash Spain

MADRID - A teenager was swept out to sea as fierce storm surges hit northern Spain on Sunday, authorities said, with waves reportedly as much as 10m high.

"A minor was carried away by the sea on the Rapadoira breakwater in Foz," a town on the coast of the northwestern Galicia region, the national coastguard said in a message on Twitter.

Coastguards and police were searching for him, it added.

Spanish news agencies said the boy was aged 15 and was swept away as he was cycling along the waterfront with a friend who escaped.

Huge waves pounded the coasts, and mechanical diggers and emergency workers laboured with their hands to shift lumps of concrete and other debris caused by the storm.

The tidal storms struck several northern regions, Spanish media reported.

In the Basque Country, rivers of seawater gushed through the streets of the major tourist city of San Sebastian, television pictures showed.