Balkan floods cause more deaths, destruction

Serbia said on Tuesday 20 people died in the floods which have swept the country over the past week whereas 30,000 people have been evacuated. A three-day state of mourning was declared starting on Wednesday. Thousands of people in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia were evacuated late Monday and early Tuesday as rising floodwaters swallowed homes and farmland after last week’s record rains. Croatia reported a second death from the flooding, bringing the overall death toll to at least 42 as the river Sava submerged several villages and threatened to spill into the eastern city of Slavonski Brod. Just across the border in northern Bosnia, more than 11,000 people fled their homes in the areas of Orasje and Bijeljina as an estimated one-quarter of Bosnia’s 3.8 million people have been affected by the flooding. Three-fifths of Orasje was submerged and the town was struggling to house all of its displaced residents, Mayor Djuro Topic told the daily Dnevni Avaz. The disaster’s effect on Bosnia’s agriculture “will run into billions” of euros, the head of the country’s farmers association, Miro Pejic, told the Fena news agency. At least 20 people have drowned in Bosnia, and several people are missing. Hundreds of landslides have also occurred in the mountains in Bosnia, destroying homes and roads, but also potentially shifting landmines left over from the war in the 1990s that resulted from the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.