Storms and Floods

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NewsBytes:

Serbia — Communities in Serbia and Bosnia battled to protect towns and power plants on Monday from rising flood waters and landslides that have devastated swathes of both countries and killed dozens of people.

Receding waters in some of the areas worst-hit by the heaviest rainfall in the Balkans since records began 120 years ago revealed scenes of devastation - twisted homes, fallen trees and rotting animals.

Authorities in Bosnia estimated some 500,000 people had been evacuated or left their homes, the kind of human displacement not seen since the country's 1992-95 war. The discovery of a body in the north of the country on Monday raised the regional death toll to at least 38.

At least 25,000 people have been evacuated in Serbia.

The River Sava, swollen by a new flood wave from Croatia a day after the rain finally stopped, continued to threaten parts of northern Bosnia and western Serbia, including Serbia's biggest power plant 30 km (18 miles) southwest of the capital, Belgrade.

Hundreds of landslides have caused havoc, particularly in mountainous Bosnia, where the Sava has devastated farmland that is a mainstay of the economy.

The river continued to overwhelm ad hoc flood defences both there and in Serbia.

Soldiers and energy workers worked through the night to build barriers of sandbags to keep the water back from the site and from a second complex, the Kostolac coal-fired plant, east of Belgrade.

Hundreds of volunteers in the capital filled sandbags and stacked them along the banks of Sava. Police issued an appeal for more bags.