Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London.

I'm Rebecca Kesb.

We begin the program in Texas, where a major search continues for 11 children still missing

after catastrophic flash floods that began on Friday, Independence Day in the States.

All the children are girls from a Christian youth group.

They were camping near the Guadalupe River, which swelled by 26 feet.

That's eight metres over the course of just 45 minutes.

Local churches like this one in Kerrville prayed for the missing and rescue workers in Sunday services today.

Well Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leather updated reporters on the number of dead locally and said every effort is being

made to find those still unaccounted for.

As of 9 a.m. this morning, we've recorded 59 deceased in Kirk County. Among those who are

deceased, we have 38 adults and 21 children. 18 adults pending identification and 4 children are also pending identification. At present,

there are 11 camp mystic campers unaccounted for, along with one counselor. So that's the local

details for Kerr County, but more widely officials say that at least 70 people are now known to have died.

21, as we heard, they're thought to be children.

Search and rescue teams are working around the clock in the hope of finding more survivors.

In total, 41 people are still missing.

But the scale of this disaster and the speed at which it happened has shocked the country. Initial

weather warnings predicted six inches of rain. That's about 15 centimetres. That would have caused

problems. In fact, in the end, it was twice as bad. 15 inches of rain fell. That's 38 centimetres.

And the rain is continuing to fall, we hear.

Well, one of those who survived the devastating floods is Connie Salas.

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