BERLIN (REUTERS) - Strong winds swept across Germany on Thursday (Oct 5), killing six people and forcing the cancellation of trains in Berlin and the north.

Police said a woman died when a tree fell on a car carrying her in the northern port city of Hamburg. The driver was taken to hospital with serious injuries, the force added.

A spokesman for the Berlin fire service said a woman was also killed in the capital when a tree fell on a car she was in.

Three people died in the state of Brandenburg surrounding Berlin, police said on Twitter. In the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern a man in a lorry was killed, again by a falling tree.

German national rail operator Deutsche Bahn said trains on some routes, such as between Hanover and Hamburg, Hanover and Berlin and Dortmund and Hamburg, had been cancelled.