It has been raining extremely hard in Bosnia-Herzegovina since Thursday evening. There are numerous floods and landslides. The village of Donja Jablanica is hit particularly hard. There is tons of rubble rolling through the town. 16 people lose their lives.
At least 18 people have died in floods and landslides in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was reported by a police spokesman in Mostar, according to the Bosnian portal “klix.ba”. Many residents are still missing. 16 of the fatalities were recorded in the Jablanica region, around 70 kilometers southwest of the capital Sarajevo, police spokesman Ljudevit Maric said. Two more people died in the storm in the Fojnica region. The country’s presidency deployed the army to the flood-hit areas.
“The situation is very serious, many people cannot leave their homes,” wrote the Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nermin Niksic, on X. The government declared a state of disaster and set up a crisis team.
The army was sent to the affected regions to reinforce the rescue forces, including with helicopters, the presidential office announced. According to regional authorities, injured people were also evacuated using helicopters from the EU mission Eufor, in which Germany is also involved. Large parts of the population are exposed to the risk of floods and landslides, said civil defense.
Place temporarily cut off from the outside world
According to rescue workers, the town of Jablanica, which has a population of 4,000, was temporarily inaccessible. On Friday, the army and civil defense arrived with heavy machinery to clear the mud. Photos in local media show landslides that buried houses up to the roof. Only the minaret was visible of a mosque.
“It was terrifying, absolutely terrifying,” said a resident of the village of Donja Jablanica, Emir Arfadzan. Rocks measuring several cubic meters and thousands of tons of rubble were washed into the area. “About ten houses were destroyed and there were deaths,” reported the 62-year-old. The people only had “seconds” to get to safety. “But we managed to save a child,” Arfadzan said.
In the town of Kiseljak, about 30 kilometers from Sarajevo, numerous houses, gardens and cars were reportedly under water. Firefighters, police and rescue workers were on duty. The mayor of Kiseljak spoke of a “biblical flood” with “hundreds of flooded houses.”
The unusually heavy rains began on Thursday evening. Neighboring Croatia issued a flood warning for the northern Adriatic coast, the Istrian peninsula and the interior. Scientists agree that extreme weather phenomena are increasing as a result of man-made climate change.
