A MASSIVE clean-up has started in the French pilgrimage town of Lourdes after flash floods forced the evacuation of some 450 pilgrims and closed the main shrine.
Rescue services and police took hundreds of visitors from hotels threatened by floodwaters from the River Gave.
Lourdes's grotto is said to be where the Virgin Mary appeared to 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. The town, by the French Pyrenees, draws six million visitors a year.
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