Authorities said the floods on the Danube, the main river crossing the state of Bavaria, appeared to be less dramatic than first feared.

Despite higher river levels than those seen in 1999, when regional records were set, the damage was in nearly all areas less serious this time.

After leaving a trail of destruction in Alpine valleys near the Austrian border, the floodwaters receded downstream late Wednesday, allowing residents throughout the region to breathe a sigh of relief.

"Images like you saw in southern Bavaria are not expected here," a spokesman for the city of Regensburg on the Danube said.

Authorities in the city of Passau, through which three rivers flow , said that the level of the Inn had already reached its peak and that the city was prepared for the rise of the Danube overnight after volunteers piled sandbags to protect homes and business in the town center.

Residents along the Danube, Inn and Isar rivers had braced for disaster while thousands of people helped heave sandbags overnight to shore up straining dams.

The Danube burst its banks at Neu-Ulm, prompting authorities to rush patients at a hospital and residents of a retirement home to safety.

Helpers scrambled throughout the night in the districts of Guenzburg and Dillingen to secure a dam.

"If the dam breaks, two towns will have to be partly evacuated," a police spokesman said.

And as relief efforts moved into a higher gear, the flooded regions became a campaign battleground with candidates in next month's general election lining up to visit stricken areas.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, fighting an uphill battle for re-election, pledged federal help for afflicted regions but said the conservative leadership in Bavaria had skimped on protective measures for vulnerable areas.

"It has been reported to me that Bavaria has a long-term protection plan. But it is also the case that the funds earmarked for it were cut in the last two years," Schroeder said in an interview with the daily Muenchener Merkur to be published Thursday.

But state environment minister Werner Schnappauf blasted the criticism as "election campaign tactics" and denied any money had been trimmed from a 2.3-billion-euro (2.8-billion-dollar) scheme called "Action Program Flooding

He noted that 900 relief workers, 850 soldiers and 2,500 Red Cross volunteers had been mobilized in the state.

Schroeder, who was able to rescue his re-election bid in 2002 with his deft management of a flooding crisis in the east of the country, is to visit the state himself Thursday. Germany goes to the polls on September 18.

Residents at the foot of the Alps began clean-up work Wednesday as hundreds of people who had been evacuated from the town of Bad Toelz returned to their homes.

The waters gradually cleared from the valley surrounding the popular ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the town of Eschenlohe, which were cut off from the outside world Tuesday.

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