Thousands Flee Deadly Balkan Floods
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Packed into buses, boats and helicopters, carrying nothing but a handful of belongings, tens of thousands fled their homes Saturday and Sunday in Bosnia and Serbia to escape the worst flooding in a century.
Rapidly rising rivers surged into homes, sometimes reaching up to the second floors, sending people climbing to rooftops for rescue.
Hundreds were also evacuated in Croatia after a sandbag levee broke, FRANCE 24 reported.
Authorities said Sunday that 30 people have died but warned the death toll could rise.
Landslides triggered by the floods also raised the risk of injury or death from land mines left over from Bosnia’s 1992-95 war. The landslides swept away many of the carefully placed warning signs around the minefields.
Tens of thousands of homes were left without electricity or drinking water.
Three months’ worth of rain has fallen on the region in three days this week, creating the worst floods since records began being kept 120 years ago.
The disaster is far from over. In the eastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina, some 10,000 people were being evacuated Saturday after the rain-swollen Sava River pushed through flood defences, endangering four villages outside the town. The peak of the Sava flood wave was expected in Bijeljina later Saturday, before advancing to Serbia.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic told a press conference that new wave of flooding on the Sava River will hit Sunday evening.
Officials said more than 16,000 people have been evacuated from flood-hit regions in Serbia, many finding shelter in schools and sports halls. Lines of mattresses covered the floors of Belgrade schools, with frightened survivors describing unstoppable torrents that surged in a matter of minutes. Eight deaths were reported and emergency crews and soldiers were using boats and helicopters to rescue thousands trapped in the town of Obrenovac, near Belgrade.