EUROPE: Thousands more people across southeastern Europe were forced from their homes yesterday as the Danube and its tributaries threatened to overwhelm makeshift flood defences.
Emergency teams have evacuated some 10,000 people in Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania.
Romanian officials said more than 7,400 people had been moved from 119 towns and villages affected by the rampaging Danube, which has been swollen to record levels by heavy spring rains and snowmelt pouring from the mountains.
Explosives experts blew up part of a dam near the Romanian town of Calarasi to route floodwater away from a densely populated stretch of the Danube, which forms Romania's frontier with Bulgaria.
But wide areas remain at risk despite the systematic flooding of vast swathes of Romanian farmland, and some 10,000 people in villages around Bistret have been told to prepare for immediate evacuation if the local floodwall collapses.
"I remember how hard I worked to build this dam in the 1960s, and I thought this dam was never going to break," Dumitru Bratan (80) said in Bistret. "I am so glad that the army is helping us." But many of his neighbours feared the worst as they used horse-drawn carts to help soldiers shore up the dam.
"We are the victims of authorities who have been telling us for three days that everything is under control. Villagers are afraid and want to escape," said Mariana Stanciu (53). "I am sure the dyke is going to break. We are at God's mercy."
While the pressure eased slightly in western Romania, where the Danube arrives from Serbia, regions to the east feared inundation by the advancing flood wave.
Most of the major port of Galati, close to the Black Sea, was under water, as some 1,500 workers tried to erect a 7km (4 miles) dam to protect residential areas of the city.
On the southern bank of the Danube in Bulgaria, thousands of volunteers filled sandbags to stem holes in floodwalls, as the river rose to a height of 9.7 metres (32ft) in the town of Vidin and cut off nearby villages; security officials were also preparing last night to evacuate the local prison on the island of Belene.
About half of the town of Nikopol is also under water, and doctors are warning that swarms of mosquitoes could spread disease as the weather warms up.
Upstream in Serbia, medical experts said rodents and insects could thrive in the aftermath of the floods. "In every flooded area, mobile teams are checking conditions, taking samples," said Snezana Milivojevic of Belgrade's Institution for Health Protection.
"All clinics and hospitals are on alert for possible cases of diarrhoea or hepatitis A."
The Danube is still at critical levels in Serbia, and a major tributary in southern Hungary is threatening to send another flood wave across the border.
"About 158,000 people in 51,150 homes are threatened by the Tisza river," said Tibor Dobson, spokesman for Hungary's disaster prevention agency.
Branislav Radanovic, an official in northern Serbia, added: "We are reinforcing embankments, increasing their height along 22km [12 miles] of the Tisza. The highest levels are expected in the next two or three days."
Some scientists say global climate change is causing more snow to fall later in winter in the highlands of central Europe. When a thaw swiftly follows, a dangerous surge of snowmelt rushes into rivers already swollen by spring rains, straining waterways to their limit and beyond.