Naharnet

Flooding Hits Serbia and Bosnia Again

One person was killed and another was missing after heavy rains brought a new wave of flooding to Serbia and Bosnia this week, just three months after historic floods killed almost 80 people.

Torrential rain in the western Serbian town of Banja Koviljaca led to a 65-year old man drowning after his house was flooded, Beta news agency reported, quoting local police.

Several local roads were damaged as well as dozens of houses and a hospital, the agency said.

The Stira river overflowed in the neighboring town of Loznica, sweeping away two bridges and flooding around 100 homes.

In neighboring Bosnia hundreds of households were flooded in several regions, mostly the same ones hit by May's severe floods, the worst in the Balkans in more than a century.

Police said one person was reported missing in Banja Luka, where a state of emergency was declared.

In the region of Gracanica, near Tuzla, some 200 homes were evacuated in several affected villages.

"Streams and rivers have very quickly turned into torrents which carried all in front of them," a member of the civil protection center told national television.

Almost two million people were affected by the May floods in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia.

Hundreds of thousands people were evacuated, many of them left homeless, while 77 people were killed, mostly in Serbia and Bosnia.

The damage for the two countries was estimated at some 3.5 billion euros ($4.7 billion).

Source: Agence France Presse


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