SARAJEVO – Flooding caused by heavy rains overnight caused power cuts in many parts of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo on Friday, with roads blocked, school classes cancelled and a plant filling oxygen tanks for COVID-19 patients submerged, officials and media said.
Dozens of people have been evacuated from retirement homes, other institutions and private houses in the worst hit parts of the city as well as in towns in the southern Herzegovina region, local media reported.
Floods and landslides struck across the country as the rain fell.
The Sarajevo cantonal government called an extraordinary session while the power transmission company Elektroprijenos said it was uncertain when the electricity supplies would stabilise due to the multiple disruptions on the grid.
The Messer plant where the oxygen tanks for COVID-19 patients are being refilled for much of Bosnia has been completely submerged, local media quoted a health ministry official as saying.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Alison Williams)
