At least one person has died and more than a million households were left without electricity in France on Thursday morning as Storm Ciaran struck western Europe overnight, bringing some of the highest wind speeds the region has witnessed in decades.

Much of northwestern Europe went on high alert Wednesday as a storm dubbed Ciaran threatened to bring gale force winds and extreme rainfall to the region. Three French departments — Finistere, Cotes-d’Armor and Manche — will be placed on red storm alert, the highest level, at midnight (2300 GMT), national weather agency Meteo-France said. Meanwhile thirty other departments including Paris and its surrounding regions are placed on orange alert.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Tuesday vowed a “merciless fight” against surging anti-Semitism after residents of the French capital discovered anti-Jewish graffiti on buildings in several districts. Paris prosecutors have launched a probe into the incident as a possible hate crime. “The Israel-Hamas conflict is clearly being imported into France,” representative council of French Jewish institutions Robert Ejnes said.

France has placed three departments in western France on red alert as Storm Ciaran is expected to hit the country’s northwest on Wednesday evening and warned residents in the departments concerned to avoid any travel overnight.

French President Emmanuel Macron heads to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan on Wednesday, aiming to boost France’s profile in a region where Russia, China, Turkey and Europe are all jostling for influence.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday his government plans to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution to make them “irreversible”.