Bosnia hit by fresh flooding, two people missing

Daria Sito-Sucic in Reuters: Police in Bosnia searched on Friday for two people swept away during the second bout of torrential rainfall since May, when the Balkans were hit by the worst floods in more than a century. The body of a woman was recovered on Thursday from the muddy bank of a river in northwestern Bosnia, and two people were listed as missing, police said.

Bosnia suffered almost 2 billion euros worth of damage to homes, infrastructure and industry in May, when heavy rains caused rivers to burst their banks, sweep away roads and bridges and set off hundreds of landslides. More than 20 people died in Bosnia and more than 60 in Serbia.

 There were similar scenes, on a lesser scale, this week in Bosnia and parts of Serbia, where a man drowned in his cellar on Tuesday.

Residents of Zeljezno Polje in central Bosnia, who lost their homes in May, saw their village cut off again this week. Gathering in the nearby town of Zepce, they called on local authorities to give them land to build new houses, clean the river bed and repair roads and power supplies before winter.

...Last month, international donors pledged more than 1.8 billion euros ($2.4 billion) to aid the recovery and rebuilding in Bosnia and Serbia. A lack of coordination between Bosnia's two autonomous regions, created as a weak and dysfunctional union after the country's 1992-95 war, means none of the money allocated to Bosnia has yet been put to use. Donors say they will fund projects, which have still to be agreed on by the rival entities....

May 2014 flooding in Bosnia, shot by Dalibor Platenik - Dali, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license