|
 Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said the death toll in the town of
Obrenovac, southwest of Belgrade, alone had reached 14.
At least 40 people have died in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, after
days of the heaviest rainfall since records began 120 years ago
caused rivers to burst their banks and triggered hundreds of
landslides.
On Serbia's border with Bosnia, the mayor of Mali Zvornik said an
"entire hill" was threatening to slide into the River Drina and
flood the town and neighboring Zvornik. Obrenovac was almost
deserted, evacuated by police and soldiers on fears of a new flood
wave.
In northern Bosnia, the Sava broke sandbag defenses overnight and
flooded several villages near the town of Orasje.
The government in Bosnia says more than 1 million people, or a
quarter of the population, have been affected by the flooding and
landslides, comparing the destruction to that of the country's
1992-95 war.
Soldiers, volunteers and energy workers continued to reinforce flood
defenses at the Kostolac coal-fired power plant east of Belgrade,
where Energy Minister Slobodan Antic said the "crisis isn't over".
"We need pumps, pumps and pumps," he told a televised cabinet
session.
Officials said they believed the Nikola Tesla plant in Obrenovac, 30
km (18 miles) southwest of Belgrade, was largely out of danger. The
plant covers roughly half of Serbia's electricity needs, but has
been working at only partial capacity, forcing the country to boost
imports.
Serbia's Vucic declared three days of mourning Wednesday-Friday.
Bosnia held its own day of mourning on Tuesday.
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Some Serbian media reports questioned whether authorities had
reacted quickly enough to warnings of impending floods, after the
skies dumped several months worth of rain on the region within the
space of a few days.
Ratko Ristic, a professor at the state Forestry Faculty in Belgrade,
said poor coordination, chaotic urban planning and a lack of proper
flood-protection mechanisms after decades of negligence were to
blame for the devastation.
"The weather conditions were really unheard of in the last 120
years, but the damage wouldn't have been so grave if we took more
care of our rivers and if we had a proper flood protection system in
place," Risic told state broadcaster Radio-Television Serbia.
(Additional reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo, Zoran
Radosavljevic in Zagreb and Fedja Grulovic in OBRENOVAC, Serbia;
Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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