Soldiers and firefighters used sandbags to reinforce river embankments and delivered food and drinking water to cut-off communities as the worst flooding in years moved Tuesday across a broad swath of Central Europe,

Poland's third-largest city Wroclaw was bracing for peaking flood waters on Thursday, with early indications its defences were holding firm, after the worst floods in at least two decades ravaged central Europe this week.

Soldiers and volunteers in southwestern Poland have been laying sandbags near swollen rivers around Wroclaw. Days of flooding have wreaked death and destruction across Central Europe.