BALKANS: Hundreds of people have been evacuated across the Balkans after stretches of the Danube River reached their highest point for more than a century.
Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania are bearing the brunt of floodwaters caused by melting snow and heavy rain across the region, after Hungary and Slovakia, further up the Danube, endured record river levels last week.
A Serb man died amid frantic efforts to raise flood barriers along the course of the Danube and Sava rivers, which converge in the capital, Belgrade.
Several streets in Belgrade and the city's railway station have been inundated, and there are fears that some walls of the city's ancient fortress may have been fatally weakened.
Belgrade officials said they expected the Danube and the Sava to peak last night, and a crisis team was working flat-out to shore up the city floodwalls.
"We have reinforced barriers which will resist the wave but the question is how long the water level will remain so high. That's what's worrying," said Srdjan Jovanovic, head of Belgrade's flood defence crew.
He appealed to city residents to avoid a popular recreation spot on the Sava, saying some young women had pierced sandbags with their high heels, increasing the danger of collapse.
"The whole recreation area would be flooded in only a few seconds," he warned.
Hundreds of Serbs have been evacuated from their houses in Belgrade and along the river as far as Smederevo, an industrial town where all council workmen have been drafted into flood-defence teams to stack sandbags along the Danube.
Zvonko Kostic, an official in Smederevo, said most Serbian towns were desperately short of the heavy machinery needed to fight floods around the clock.
"The volunteers are tired, it's hard to keep up the tempo day after day," he said. In northern Serbia, close to Hungary, some 10,000 hectares of rich farmland has been completely submerged and 200,000 hectares of crops damaged.
The Romanian government has intentionally flooded more than 90,000 hectares of farmland to relieve the pressure along populated stretches of the river.
Despite the move, some 700 people were forced from their homes in 12 Romanian counties on the Danube, which passes through eight countries on its way from Germany's Black Forest to the Black Sea; in Europe, only Russia's Volga River is longer.
While Romania is hoping for some respite today, Bulgaria is maintaining a state of emergency in regions along the Danube, which forms the frontier between the two countries. They are both still reeling from devastating floods that killed dozens of people last year, and which some scientists say are part of a pattern caused by climate change.
Almost half of the Danube port of Nikopol, on the Bulgarian side of the Danube, is reported to be underwater, endangering supplies of fresh water.