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Rains plague Serbia with floods, landslides

Países
Serbia
+ 1
Fuentes
Caritas
Fecha de publicación

Vatican City, 9 May 2006 - Caritas Serbia and Montenegro is appealing for over 35,000 USD in order to continue to help victims of flooding that ravaged the region for most of April, not only in the areas along the Danube river basin and its tributaries, but also central Serbia, which was battered well before the Danube began to overrun its riverbanks.

Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes after heavy rains throughout March and April resulted in flooding and landslides. Initially the areas worst affected were in the south-central region around the town of Trstenik, where waters stagnated along the plains, destroying any produce and making it impossible to plant the next crops.

In addition, the Danube and some of its tributaries in the north bulged and finally overflowed dykes, despite sandbags and other reinforcements, completely destroying some villages in the impoverished Vojvodina province. Here again, some 240,000 hectares of agricultural land remains under water or water-logged. Vojvodina, Serbia's breadbasket, has lost all of its crops and the livelihoods of farmers there have been destroyed.

The national Caritas says it will bring assistance to some 800 families, providing them with food and hygiene packs. Hundreds of these emergency items have already been distributed to flood victims. They will also provide people with boots.

Caritas Serbia and Montenegro has selected one village, Kragujevac, which will receive funds and technical assistance to rebuild its tattered roads infrastructure. Most of the village roads were washed away by landslides.

The organisation said it hopes the move will inspire others to take on similar projects in a show of solidarity with Serbia's flood victims.

Caritas has also begun the reconstruction process, providing about a dozen families with technical assistance and materials to rebuild their homes.

The Serbian government has declared a state of emergency in eight municipalities in northern and central Serbia. The government estimates damages to be about 45 million USD. Only in recent days have the waters begun to recede, though the threat still looms.

Caritas Internationalis is a confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development, and social service organisations present in over 200 countries and territories.

For more information, contact:

Nancy McNally, media officer
Tel: +39 06 69879752
media.officer@caritas.va
www.caritas.org