Authorities say at least 11 people have been killed by the torrential rains and flash flooding which first hit the central Italian region of Marche on Thursday evening last week.

In Cantiano, a village close to the neighbouring Umbria region, residents were clearing mud from the streets, after torrents had swept through several towns leaving a trail of trapped and damaged cars, Reuters footage showed.

“My fruit shop has been turned upside down,” Luciana Agostinelli, a local resident, told Reuters.

Around 400 millimetres of rain fell within two to three hours, the civil protection agency said, a third of the amount usually received in a year.

“It was like an earthquake,” Ludovico Caverni, the mayor of Serra Sant’Abbondio, another village hit by the floods, told RAI state radio.

The head of the national civil protection agency, Fabrizio Curcio, met local authorities in Marche’s capital city of Ancona to assess the damage, while party chiefs campaigning for Italy’s September 25 election expressed their solidarity.

Footage released by fire brigades showed rescuers on rafts trying to evacuate people in the seaside town of Senigallia, while others attempted to clear an underpass of debris.

Paola Pino d’Astore, an expert at the Italian Society of Environmental Geology (SIGEA), told Reuters the floods were due to climate change, and were not easy to predict.

“It is an irreversible phenomenon, a taste of what our future will be,” she said.

Some 300 firefighters are currently operating in the area and have rescued dozens of people who had climbed on roofs and trees overnight to escape the floods, the fire brigade said.

Stefano Aguzzi, head of civil protection at Marche’s regional government, said the downpour was far stronger than had been forecast.

“We were given a normal alert for rain, but nobody had expected anything like this,” he told reporters.

Some of the identified victims of the disaster: Nando Olivi (left to right), Noemi Bartolucci, Giuseppe Tisba, Andrea Tisba , Diego Chiappetti and Michele Bomprezzi. (Photo: ANSA)

Among the victims was an eight-year-old named Mattia, whose mother Silvia Mereu was unable to rescue him from the force of the floods upon exiting her car.

A short distance away, Erina, 75 was also killed by savage torrents in her home. Her husband, her son's partner and her granddaughter managed to save themselves by climbing to the house’s second floor, while the woman lingered in an attempt to close a window, a choice that proved fatal to her.

Also taken were the lives of three men from Pianello di Ostra. Andrea Tisba, 25, his father Giuseppe, 60, and 52-year-old Diego Chiappetti died trying to ‘save’ the cars in their garages. A decision dictated perhaps by recklessness, or simply by having underestimated the risk.

Eighty-year-old Ferdinando Olivi from Pianello is also said to have died because he did not want to leave his home.

"My uncle died perhaps because he underestimated the danger: he did not want to leave his house and was trapped,” said his 50-year-old nephew.

Trapped in her garage, where she drowned, was 80-year-old Maria Luisa Sereni, in the hamlet of Trecastelli. The body of another victim, 42-year-old Mohamed Enaji, who lived in Castelleone di Suasa, was transferred to hospital in Ancona. He also drowned, like Gino Petrolati, an 89-year-old who was swept away by the flood wave at Bettolelle, a hamlet of Senigallia.

The body of 17-year-old Noemi Bartolucci has also been identified, a few kilometres away from the place where she was swept away by the force of the water in Barbara, while trying to save herself with mother and brother on board two cars. Her mother, Brunella Chiù, 56, is still missing.

The eleventh victim identified is Michele Bomprezzi, aged 47, the brother of the former mayor of Arcevia Andrea Bomprezzi. He was driving his car, an Opera Corsa, which was swept away by water and mud, and later pulled out of the Misa River.

In the wake of this grave tragedy, Enrico Letta, leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, said it would suspend campaigning in Marche “in a sign of mourning”, and to allow its local activists to participate in efforts to help the flood-hit communities. Other political leaders are expected to follow suit.

- With AAP.