PRAGUE: Floodwaters that have killed at least 10 people across Europe on Tuesday morning peaked in the Czech capital Prague and were heading toward Germany, officials said.

"It's peaking in Prague right now and by the evening the wave will get to Usti and Labem," about 30 kilometres (20 miles) up the Elbe river from the German border, Petr Dvorak, spokesman for the Czech Hydrometeorogical Institute, told AFP.

The floods have deluged Prague's historic centre, shuttering businesses and forcing a chaotic nighttime evacuation of the city's zoo.

The floods have killed seven people so far in the Czech Republic, police said Tuesday. Two people died in Austria and one in Switzerland. Germany has also been hit.

"The last victim (in the Czech Republic) was a lady who was walking her dog in a park on Monday evening and who died under an eroded tree that fell on her," police spokeswoman Pavla Kopecka told AFP.

Fire brigades evacuated 8,340 people as of 0400 GMT on Tuesday, said spokeswoman Nicole Zaoralova.

The heavy rainfall has triggered nightmarish memories of the 2002 floods that killed dozens in the region including 17 in the Czech Republic alone.

Dvorak said the waters would recede in the western part of the Czech Republic on Wednesday.

"There will be heavier rain in the east of the country and some rivers there will rise high, but the extent should be lower than here," he added.