World

VOLNOVAKHA, Ukraine — Separatist rebels firing mortar shells and grenades killed at least nine Ukrainian soldiers in the restive east on Thursday, dealing a heavy blow to the beleaguered government just three days before a crunch presidential poll.

The attacks were the deadliest for the military since it launched an offensive six weeks ago against a pro-Moscow insurgency that is threatening to tear the country apart.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk accused Russia of trying to “escalate the conflict” and disrupt Sunday’s vote, calling on the UN Security Council to hold an urgent meeting on the crisis.

He charged that the Kremlin’s announcement of a troop withdrawal from the border was merely a “bluff”, saying that even if the soldiers were moving away, “armed terrorists” were still infiltrating Ukraine.

Western pressure is mounting on Russia not to meddle in the snap election, seen as crucial to prevent all-out civil war erupting on Europe’s eastern flank.

Russia set Western nerves on edge when it massed some 40,000 troops on the border, raising fears of an invasion into eastern Ukraine after its seizure of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Thursday he has seen some evidence of “limited Russian troop activity in the vicinity of the border with Ukraine that may suggest that some of these forces are preparing to withdraw”.

But rebels in Ukraine’s heavily Russified eastern industrial regions of Donetsk and Lugansk are showing no signs of scaling back resistance to what they regard as an illegitimate government in Kiev.

The Ukrainian defence ministry said the worst of the two overnight attacks saw the insurgents blow up a military vehicle after volleying mortar shells and grenades at a roadblock set up by government troops near the Donetsk region town of Volnovakha.

Eight men were killed and another 17 wounded.

Another soldier was killed and two injured in a similar strike near Rubizhne in Lugansk.

Kiev’s interim government launched its so-called “anti-terrorist” operation in mid-April aimed at crushing the rebels who have seized more than a dozen eastern cities and towns and declared sovereignty in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

An AFP toll compiled through UN and Ukrainian government sources puts the number of deaths suffered in fighting across the east since mid-April at around 140.

President Vladimir Putin — his government wary of devastating sanctions threatened by Washington and its European allies — has so far refrained from recognising the legitimacy of the rebel republics.

But Putin rejects the legitimacy of the pro-Western team that toppled a Moscow-backed president in February on the back of a massive wave of street protests.

And he has given only the most grudging backing for an election that is all but certain to bring a pro-Western president to power who will seek to fold the nation of 46 million more fully into Europe and break for good its historic dependence on Russia.

“What is important is not the election itself,” Putin said Thursday during a visit to China.

“What is important is that [Kiev] repairs relations with the regions so that people start feeling like full-fledged citizens again,” he said.

US Vice President Joe Biden warned Putin that Russia’s economy — already approaching recession — would suffer immediate consequences should Russia be judged to have interfered in the vote.

“If Russia undermines these elections on Sunday, we must remain resolute in imposing greater costs,” Biden told reporters in Bucharest on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s interior ministry said it is mobilising more than 55,000 police and 20,000 volunteers to ensure that Sunday’s presidential ballot goes off smoothly, despite fears it will be difficult to organise in the east.

Rebel leaders have vowed to disrupt the vote in Donetsk and Lugansk, the heartland of Ukraine’s Soviet-era industrial rust belt that churns out more than 15 per cent of the country’s economic output.

Armed separatists on Thursday seized four coal mines in the Lugansk region, and demanded that its workers supply them with explosives, the Ukrainian energy ministry said.

Earlier Thursday, the self-proclaimed leader of Lugansk Valery Bolotov proclaimed martial law and called for Putin to send peacekeeping forces that could help avert a “humanitarian catastrophe”.

Sunday’s poll pits the overwhelming favourite Petro Poroshenko — a 48-year-old confectioner whose chocolate factories have been shuttered in Russia on dubious health and safety grounds — against nearly 20 challengers including the divisive nationalist ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko.

JOS, Nigeria — Rescue workers on Wednesday combed through the rubble of Nigeria’s deadliest bomb attack after at least 118 people were killed in the central city of Jos, with Boko Haram blamed for the atrocity.

Emergency services picked through the burnt-out remains of vehicles and collapsed buildings in the New Abuja Market area of the city, where two car bombs exploded within 20 minutes of each other on Tuesday.

The attack was the latest affront to the Nigerian government’s internationally backed security crackdown in response to the mass abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls on April 14 that has sparked global attention.

Two more attacks in villages near the girls’ hometown of Chibok in northeastern Borno state were, meanwhile, reported, with witnesses saying that 30 people were killed on Monday and Tuesday.

In Jos, where Boko Haram have attacked before, plateau state governor Jonah Jang’s spokesman said the bombing bore the hallmarks of the Islamist extremists.

“This is not a Berom-Fulani attack,” Pam Ayuba told AFP, referring to the long-standing ethnic violence between Christian farmers and Muslim herdsmen that has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the region in the last two decades.

“The investigation is still ongoing but this is clearly an extension of the terrorist activity that has affected the northeast of the country, the Boko Haram insurgents.”

Kyari Mohammed, a Boko Haram specialist and chairman of the Centre for Peace Studies at Modibbo Adama University in Yola, Adamawa state, also blamed the Islamists.

“They’re the only ones capable of doing this. Every other rebel or fringe group can use bombs but not of this scale or sophistication,” he said.

“I have the feeling that what they want to achieve is to escalate things because of the international pressure which has built up [because of the kidnapping].”

On the day of the mass abduction, Boko Haram launched a car bomb attack on a bus station in a suburb of the capital Abuja which killed 75 and are suspected of a copy-cat attack in the same location on May 1 which left 19 dead.

Four people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in the northern city of Kano on Sunday, although it was unclear whether the attack was linked to Boko Haram, despite the militants having attacked the city before.

Rescue workers were among those who were caught up in the Jos bombings.

As they tended to the injured from the first blast, the second detonated. Improvised explosive devices were hidden in a minibus and truck, the military said.

Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said late on Tuesday that 118 were killed and 56 injured but warned that the death toll could rise further.

“Our director general is on his way to the scene now,” NEMA spokesman Manzo Ezekiel said on Wednesday.

“He and his team will carry out a rapid assessment of the situation and then we will be able to estimate the losses that we incurred.

“So, for now, we are holding at 118 [dead] but there is a likelihood of some changes.”

Nigeria and its President Goodluck Jonathan have been criticised for their slow response to the Chibok kidnapping as well as their overall response to the five-year insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives.

The international attention on the plight of the missing girls has seen specialist teams from the United States, Britain, France and Israel sent to Nigeria to help in the search effort.

Escalation of violence 

Parliament on Tuesday approved a request for a further six-month extension of a state of emergency in Borno and neighbouring Yobe and Adamawa states with the caveat that non-military means should also be explored to end the violence.

Jonathan is adamant that there will be no negotiations with Boko Haram on swapping the girls for militant fighters held in Nigerian jails but the government has maintained it is open to dialogue on wider issues.

In New York, Nigeria submitted a request to the United Nations to proscribe Boko Haram as an international terrorist group, while the country’s neighbours have vowed to step up cooperation to prevent a regional conflagration.

BELGRADE — A landmine dislodged by devastating floods in the Balkans exploded in Bosnia, officials said Wednesday, hurting no one but highlighting the dangers of a huge clean-up operation as governments began counting the costs.

The device, one of an estimated 120,000 mines left over from the 1990s Yugoslav wars, went off on late on Tuesday in the Brcko district of northern Bosnia, the national Mine Action Centre (MAC) said.

A fridge containing nine explosive devices was also found in a flooded garden, it said. Other dangerous finds included a rocket launcher and a large plastic bin full of bombs and ammunition, also thought to date from the 1992-95 war.

“Some mines are made of plastic and they float like plastic plates,” said Fikret Smajis from the MAC. “But even those made of iron... can be easily washed away.”

Water from the worst floods in more than a century, which have killed 49 people and caused the evacuation of almost 150,000 people in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, was meanwhile receding in some areas.

But the situation remained tense in the Serbian capital Belgrade and in northeast Bosnia in the wake of days of torrential rain in southeast Europe last week that caused the River Sava and its tributaries to burst their banks.

“The River Sava is still threatening,” said Blaz Zuparic, an official in the Bosnian town of Orasje pinning its hopes on a six-kilometre wall of sandbags.

“The damage is so huge that the region will take more than 10 years to recover,” he said.

“Only God can help us to hold on.”

In Belgrade, where the Sava flows into the Danube, volunteers have been working around-the-clock to erect a wall of sandbags 12 kilometres long.

“We are expecting a peak this Wednesday, and again on Friday. If that passes we will be able to say that we have protected Belgrade,” Mayor Sinisa Mali said.

More than 1.6 million people in the region have been affected. In Bosnia, a quarter of the 3.8 million population is without safe drinking water.

Vast tracts of farmland are still under water, large areas are without power and many towns and villages remain deluged and difficult to access. The death toll may yet rise as more bodies are found.

Authorities have warned of a risk of epidemics as drowned farm animals rot, and efforts by health experts and the army to recover the bloated carcasses have been hampered.

“We have to act quickly in order to avoid an even more serious catastrophe, that of infectious diseases,” Serbian Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar said.

Serbian health officials were also spraying against mosquitoes, according to the Public Health Institute.

Preliminary estimates in Serbia alone indicate that the cost for cleaning up will far exceed 0.64 percent of the country’s total economic output, the level at which a country can request EU aid.

BANGKOK — Thailand’s army chief imposed martial law Tuesday after months of deadly anti-government protests caused political paralysis, but insisted the intervention did not amount to yet another military coup.

Gun-toting troops fanned out after martial law was declared in a dawn broadcast, as General Prayut Chan-O-Cha exploited century-old legislation that confers far-reaching powers on the armed forces to act in an emergency.

But he left the caretaker civilian government in office and later invited the country’s warring political factions to sit down for talks, as the United States, the EU, Japan and Southeast Asian neighbours urged Thailand to stay on a democratic track and resolve its differences peacefully.

Soldiers and military vehicles were seen in the heart of the capital’s retail and hotel district. Troops were also positioned at TV stations where broadcasts were suspended under sweeping censorship orders, although regular Thais appeared largely unfazed.

The dismissal of prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra earlier this month in a controversial court ruling has stoked tensions in the kingdom, which has endured years of political turmoil.

“Red Shirt” supporters of Yingluck and her brother Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed as premier in a 2006 coup, have warned of the threat of civil war if power is handed to an unelected leader, as opposition protesters demand.

Thaksin, who lives abroad to avoid a jail term for corruption, said on Twitter that the imposition of martial law was expected but must not “destroy” democracy.

The backdrop is a nearly decade-long struggle pitting a royalist establishment — backed by parts of the military, judiciary and Bangkok-based elite — against Thaksin’s billionaire family, which has traditionally enjoyed strong support among poor and rural voters in the north.

New York-based Human Rights Watch branded the imposition of martial law a “de facto coup”, voicing alarm at the impact on freedom of expression.

‘Situation not normal’ 

It was not immediately clear how the intervention of the generals — traditionally seen as staunch defenders of the monarchy — would affect the balance in the long-running power struggle.

The government officially remained in office, and General Prayut presented himself as a mediator.

“We are in the process of inviting both sides to talk but at the minute the situation is still not normal... that’s why I have had to invoke martial law,” he told reporters.

“The military will not tolerate any more loss of lives.”

Martial law allows the army to ban public gatherings, restrict people’s movements, conduct searches, impose curfews and detain suspects for up to seven days.

Thailand has been without a fully functioning government since December, disrupting government spending, spooking investors and deterring foreign tourists.

The United States, a key ally of Thailand, said the use of martial law must be temporary and urged all parties “to respect democratic principles”.

Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy is sliding towards recession and Japan, whose companies have some of the biggest foreign investment in Thailand, also expressed “grave concerns” at the unfolding crisis.

Caretaker Prime Minister Niwattumrong Boonsongpaisan, who replaced Yingluck, called for fresh polls on August 3 to cut through the political quagmire, urging election authorities to help craft a decree for the king’s endorsement next week.

But the protesters say they will not stomach new polls without widespread reforms to weaken Thaksin’s influence on Thai politics.

‘No need to panic’ 

The early hours announcement on military-run television said martial law had been invoked “to restore peace and order for people from all sides” after nearly seven months of protests that have left 28 people dead and hundreds wounded.

“This is not a coup,” it said. “The public do not need to panic but can still live their lives as normal.”

Despite the assurances, concerns a military takeover was under way were fuelled by the troop presence and strict censorship of media in the interests of “national security”.

“I think what we are looking at is a prelude to a coup. That is for sure. It is all part of a plot to create a situation of ungovernability to legitimise this move by the army,” said Pavin Chachavalpongpun from the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at Japan’s Kyoto University.

Anti-government demonstrators vowed to remain on the streets.

“We will still keep fighting — we have not won at all,” their firebrand leader Suthep Thaugsuban said at a rally late Tuesday.

His movement forced the annulment of elections in February and is pressing the Thai upper chamber to invoke the constitution to dump the caretaker government and appoint a new premier.

It is unclear what legal basis they are drawing on.

Some 25 senators signed a petition Tuesday urging the interventionist constitutional court to move against the Cabinet.

But on the streets of the capital, where a military crackdown on pro-Thaksin Red Shirts protests in 2010 under the previous government left dozens dead, life mostly went on as usual.

Thais have become accustomed to political upheaval, although there was some confusion and nervousness over how the crisis will unfold.

“Whether martial law will be helpful or not I can’t say because it’s only the first day,” said Chitra Hiranrat, 49, as she waited for a motorcycle taxi to go to work.

BELGRADE — Serbia declared three days of national mourning Tuesday as the death toll from the worst floods to hit the Balkans in living memory rose to 49 and health officials warned of a possible epidemic.

More than 1.6 million people have been hit as the river Sava and its tributaries have burst their banks, inundating tens of thousands of hectares of farmland, and destroying homes and buildings.

At least 49 people have been killed already by the worst floods in central Europe for more than a century.

Weather officials warned that water levels of the mighty Danube, Europe’s second longest river after the Volga, could rise further Wednesday at its confluence with the Sava in the Serbian capital Belgrade.

Serbia, which has been the worst affected by the deluge, declared three days of mourning for its victims from Wednesday.

“We have been affected 10 times more than the other countries in the region, but I hope the toll would not show that,” Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said.

Authorities have begun assessing the damage caused by the floods, already expected to reach hundreds of millions of euros.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said its president, Suma Chakrabarti, would advise the new Serbian government — sworn in late last month — on its response to the flooding during a three-day visit from Wednesday.

Sarajevo on Tuesday also declared a day of mourning for Bosnia’s 25 dead as thousands of volunteers struggled to reinforce dikes along the Sava river.

More than 100,000 people have already been evacuated in Bosnia in the worst exodus since its 1992-95 war.

Threat of epidemics 

The World Health Organisation said Tuesday that it has sent an expert to advise Serbian authorities on sanitation and ensuring safe drinking water for people as they return home after the floods.

The UN health agency said it is also working to mobilise medical supplies, including supplies to fight diseases commonly spread by floods.

In Bosnia, health authorities have begun disinfecting flooded areas in a bid to prevent outbreaks turning into an epidemic as temperatures rise.

Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija said more than a quarter of the country’s population of 3.8 million has been affected by the floods after the heaviest rainfalls on record began last week.

“We will face a major fight against epidemics and infectious diseases which are inevitable after such floods,” said Nermin Niksic, the prime minister of the Muslim Croat Federation, one of the two entities that make up post-war Bosnia.

Local health officials warned of the possible outbreak of “infectious diseases”, calling on the population from affected areas to use only bottled water.

Tonnes of dead animal carcasses have already been taken from farms for destruction, but muddy areas and landslides have hampered their collection.

“In some areas there were cases of enterocolitis which could be a signal of epidemics,” said Sevledina Sarajlic-Spahic, the top health officer in Zenica, one of the worst affected towns in Bosnia.

Belgrade braces 

Serbia, where more than 30,000 people have been evacuated from the areas affected by floods, braced for more rising waters.

Hydrologist Sinisa Mihajlovic predicted the Danube would swell further in the coming days but that it should “remain within the flood-defence limit”.

Belgrade mayor Sinisa Mali said the capital was “ready” in case water levels rise further on the Sava and Danube.

“We are following the situation closely, and we are ready to intervene if needed,” Mali told reporters.

In Belgrade, volunteers have placed some 12 kilometres of sandbags to prevent flooding.

“I didn’t hesitate at all,” said Milenko Pajic, an 18-year-old student. “If my grandfather could fight for his country with arms, I can pack up and hand over sandbags.”

Meanwhile in Obrenovac, one of the worst-hit towns in Serbia, rescuers have managed to contain the waters around the Nikola Tesla power plant which produces half the country’s electricity.

Vucic told a government meeting that so far 14 deaths were registered in Obrenovac alone after another two victims were found, with autopsy results showing half of them drowned.

The disaster claimed another eight lives elsewhere in Serbia and two in neighbouring Croatia.

Landslides claimed at least one other victim in Bosnia.

Dozens of towns and villages have been cut off and more than 2,000 landslides have been reported in the region.

And in another potentially deadly side-effect, officials in Bosnia warned Monday that some 120,000 unexploded mines left over from the Balkan wars of the 1990s could be dislodged and moved.

SEOUL — South Korean President Park Geun-hye, tears rolling down her cheeks, formally apologised on Monday for a ferry disaster that killed about 300 people, mostly school children, and said she would dismantle the coast guard for failing in its duties.

Park has been hit hard by an angry nationwide outcry over the government’s response to South Korea’s worst civilian maritime disaster in 20 years, and the seemingly slow and ineffective rescue operation.

Polls show support for Park has dropped by more than 20 points since the April 16 disaster.

“I apologise to the nation for the pain and suffering that everyone felt, as the president who should have been responsible for the safety and lives of the people,” Park said in a televised national address, her first since the Sewol capsized, and sank with 476 passengers and crew on board.

In an unprecedented show of emotion, tears flowed as she fought back sobs, remembering some of the teenagers who died trying to help one another, calling them heroes.

Park, who is serving a single five-year term, is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the former military strongman who ruled for nearly two decades in the 1960s and 1970s. She lost both her parents to assassins.

At least 286 people on board the Sewol were killed and 18 remain missing. Only 172 people were rescued, with the rest presumed to have drowned.

Of the passengers, 339 were children and their teachers on a field trip from a high school on the outskirts of Seoul.

Park vowed sweeping reforms to improve oversight, as well as tough punishment for bureaucrats and businesses whose negligence endangers public safety.

“A 20-year-old vessel was bought and refurbished to add excessive capacity, then it was loaded with much more cargo than allowed with a false reporting on weight, but not a single person in the position to supervise stopped any of it,” Park said.

She singled out structural problems within the coast guard as the main reason why there was such a high casualty toll from an accident that played out on national television as the vessel gradually sank with most of the passengers trapped inside.

“Had there been an immediate and proactive rescue operation after the accident, we would have been able to reduce the casualties,” Park said.

The coast guard’s rescue duties would be transferred to a national emergency safety agency to be set up and the national police will take over its investigative function, she said.

Crew abandoned ship

Some of the crew, including the captain, were caught on videotape abandoning ship while the children were repeatedly told to stay put in their cabins and await further orders.

Park has apologised in person to many family members of the victims but her administration has faced continued criticism for its handling of the disaster.

Park’s public support has dropped to 46 per cent, from 70 per cent before the accident, according to a recent poll. Her formal apology and the blueprint for bureaucratic reform have been criticised for coming too late, while her decision to break up the coast guard has also been questioned.

“Although we need to integrate government functions on safety and disaster management, dissolving the coast guard all of sudden can make more problems that may be difficult to fix,” said Professor Lee Jun-han of Incheon National University.

South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy, and one of its leading manufacturing and export powerhouses, has developed into one of the world’s most vibrant and technically advanced democracies, but faces criticism that regulatory controls and safety standards have not kept pace.

An electrical device on a subway train exploded and shattered window glass at a station in a satellite city south of Seoul on Monday, injuring 11 passengers who were treated for cuts, media reported, in the second incident involving the capital region’s sprawling subway network this month.

On May 2, two trains collided at a station injuring about 200 people which authorities blamed on a defective signal switch.

Park said the coast guard had not only failed in its search and rescue duty but that, in its current form, it would be unable to prevent another large-scale disaster.

“The coast guard continued to get bigger in size but did not have enough personnel and budget allocated for maritime safety, and training for rescue was very much insufficient,” she said.

All 15 surviving crew members were indicted last week, including the captain and three senior crew members on homicide charges. The remaining 11 crew were indicted for negligence.

The prosecution says the ferry was structurally defective after a remodelling to add capacity and was massively overloaded with cargo. A sharp turn then caused it to list and capsize.

The Sewol had been on a supposedly routine journey from the mainland port of Incheon south to the holiday island of Jeju.

BELGRADE — Bosnia said Monday it was witnessing “the biggest exodus” since the 1990s war after the worst floods in a century inundated huge swathes of the Balkans, killing at least 47 people.

Muddy waters from the Sava River have submerged houses, churches, mosques and roads in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia after record rainfall last week wreaked havoc across the region.

There were fears that dead bodies and animal carcasses could lead to disease outbreaks, while officials warned that 120,000 unexploded mines from the conflicts of the 1990s could be dislodged.

“More than 100,000 people” have been evacuated from Bosnia alone, said Stanko Sliskovic of Bosnia’s emergency services, with tens of thousands more displaced in neighbouring countries.

“This is the biggest exodus since the end of the 1992-1995 war,” he told AFP.

Dozens of towns and villages have been cut off, and over 2,000 landslides already reported, with water levels expected to continue rising in the coming days.

“This is Armageddon, I can’t describe it otherwise,” Nedeljko Brankovic told AFP from Krupanj, a town in the southwestern town of Serbia. “Houses are literally washed away and landslides are everywhere.”

Bosnian Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija said more than a quarter of the country’s population of 3.8 million “has been affected by the floods” after the heaviest rainfalls on record began last week.

“Right now, more than one million people have no water,” he said.

In Serbia, some 600,000 of its 7.2 million inhabitants were affected with “severe floods following the heaviest rains the Balkans have witnessed in 120 years”, the UN’s World Food Programme said in a statement.

“The damage caused by these floods is comparable to the damage caused during the war,” it said.

The death toll from the floods rose to 47 Monday after two new victims were found overnight in a village near the western Serbian town of Sabac.

Neighbouring Croatia has also evacuated hundreds of people from along the river Sava.

 ‘I’ve lost everything again’ 

Rescuers told of wrenching scenes as they finally reached cut-off villages, with dozens of people huddling on top of the tallest houses with no water or food.

“It was like a tsunami,” said Suad Garanovic, resident of the Bosnian village of Topcic Polje, as he looked over his house, now drowned in mud.

“This is the second time I’ve fled my house. The first time was during the war. Now, just like then, I’ve lost everything,” said Nihad Smajlovic in a nearby hamlet.

Svetlana Obojcic described her rescue along with neighbours from the top floor of her building in the Serbian town of Obrenovac.

“All 30 of us were in one flat for three days without electricity,” said the mother-of-two, hugging her six-year old twins in a temporary shelter in the Belgrade suburb of Sumice.

“We ate what we had, we did not have enough water, but at least we are dry now,” she said.

More than 8,000 people, a third of Obrenovac’s population, had already been evacuated since Friday and Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic ordered on Monday that the rest of the town join them. Helicopter footage showed most of the city’s buildings submerged.

Emergency teams were desperately trying to strengthen defences at the nearby Nikola Tesla power plant, which produces around half of Serbia’s electricity and is currently only protected by temporary dikes built by thousands of volunteers along the swollen Sava River.

“I am devastated. I have left everything, my cattle, my pigs, my chickens. Thank God my wife, children and grandchildren are safe,” said 78-year old pensioner Veselin Rankovic from Zabrezje, a nearby village.

In Belgrade, thousands of volunteers were packing and lifting sandbags on the riverfronts of the Sava to secure the capital’s lower areas from flooding expected in the coming days.

Threat of disease, mines 

In a potentially deadly side-effect, officials in Bosnia warned on Monday that some 120,000 unexploded mines left over from the Balkan war of the 1990s could be dislodged and moved.

“Water and landslides have possibly moved some mines, and taken away mine warning signs,” Sasa Obradovic, an official of Bosnia’s Mine Action Centre told AFP.

He warned residents to be “extremely cautious when they start cleaning their houses, land or gardens as the remaining mud could hide mines and other explosive devices brought by rivers”.

Health authorities have warned of possible outbreaks of infectuous diseases such as enterocolitis, typhoid and hepatitis as temperatures rise.

“We have to react properly to avoid an even worse catastrophe, to avoid infectuous diseases,” Serbian Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar told state TV RTS.

The United Nations flew life-saving equipment to Serbia overnight, with another plane with emergency food and water supplies was expected later Monday.

SOMA, Turkey — Turkish police on Sunday detained 24 people, including mining executives, suspected of negligence over the disaster that killed 301 people, and sparked fury at the government and officials, local media reported.

Rescue operations ended on Saturday after the bodies of the last two trapped miners were retrieved following the country’s worst ever industrial disaster in the western town of Soma.

Dozens of prosecutors have been assigned to investigate the fire and explosion believed to have been sparked by an electrical fault at a private mine.

Among those detained is Akin Celik, general director of mine operator Soma Komur, NTV television reported. The suspects could face charges including manslaughter, it added.

Soma Komur has vehemently denied any negligence.

“We have all worked very hard. I have not seen such an incident in 20 years,” Celik said on Friday.

The labour ministry also denied culpability, saying the mine had been inspected every six months.

A preliminary expert report on the accident obtained by the Milliyet newspaper pointed to several safety violations in the mine, including a shortage of carbon monoxide detectors and ceilings made of wood instead of metal.

The authenticity of the report could not be immediately verified.

A group of rescue workers told NTV that a cave-in had occurred in the mine after the ceilings burnt down and collapsed due to the fire.

The Soma disaster has sparked a wave of fury against the government, adding to pressure on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of his expected run for the presidency in August.

Soma was in a virtual lockdown on Sunday after checkpoints were set up on the main roads leading to the town where all demonstrations were banned, AFP reporters on the scene said.

Only inspectors and security forces were allowed at the site of the disaster after the rescue teams had left.

On Saturday, at least 36 people, including eight lawyers, were arrested and held in a stadium in Soma after they attempted to make a statement. Some of the lawyers were beaten and injured by police.

Images of police firing tear gas and water cannon at thousands of protesters in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir have also revived memories of the government’s heavy-handed crackdown against nationwide protests in 2013.

A total of 787 people were inside the mine when the blast hit, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said. Most of the victims died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“I was very sad when I came here and I am still very sad,” Yildiz told reporters before leaving Soma on Sunday, pledging support for the stricken families.

The disaster has added to the huge political pressure on Erdogan, whose Islamic-rooted party emerged triumphant from March 30 local elections despite a corruption scandal implicating key allies and last year’s mass protests.

KOSTOLAC, Serbia/DOBOJ, Bosnia — Soldiers, police and villagers battled to protect power plants in Serbia from rising flood waters on Sunday as the death toll from the Balkan region’s worst rainfall in more than a century reached 37.

Twelve bodies were recovered from the worst-hit Serbian town of Obrenovac, 30km southwest of the capital, Belgrade, but the number was likely to rise as waters receded.

“The situation is catastrophic,” Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic told reporters.

Hundreds of soldiers and residents scrambled to raise sandbag barriers around the perimeter of the Kostolac power plant east of Belgrade, where a Reuters cameraman said waters from the swollen River Mlava, a tributary to the much larger River Danube, had come to within a kilometre.

Workers at the plant joined the effort, digging up a road in a bid to divert waters that threatened to flood nearby coal mines. The Kostolac plant supplies 20 per cent of Serbia’s electricity needs.

Russian cargo planes carrying boats, generators and food joined rescue teams from around Europe, and thousands of local volunteers in evacuating people and building flood defences after the River Sava, swollen by days of torrential rain, burst its banks.

Rains eased and floodwaters receded on Sunday in some of the worst-hit areas of Serbia and Bosnia, but the Sava was forecast to rise further. Thousands of people have been displaced.

Serbia’s EPS power utility said a fresh flood wave also threatened Serbia’s largest power plant, the Nikola Tesla in Obrenovac.

Flooding had already cut Serbian power generation by 40 per cent, forcing the cash-strapped country to boost imports.

“More and more water is getting closer but for the time being the sandbag defence barriers are holding,” Tanjug news agency quoted Kostolac general manager Dragan Jovanovic as saying.

‘Tsunami’

The economic impact of the floods is likely to be huge, devastating the agricultural sector vital to both the Serbian and Bosnian economies.

Vucic said a fire and flooding of surface mines on Friday at the Kolubara coal-fired power plant southwest of Belgrade had caused damage of at least 100 million euros ($137 million).

“These are the kind of waters not seen in 1,000 years, let alone 100,” Vucic told a televised Cabinet session.

He said 12 bodies had been recovered from Obrenovac after waters dropped from a peak of some three metres. At least five more were reported dead elsewhere in Serbia.

In Bosnia, 19 people were confirmed dead, with nine bodies recovered from the northeastern town of Doboj after what the regional police chief described as a “tsunami” of water.

A Reuters cameraman at the scene said half the town was still submerged. Soldiers delivered food and medical supplies by truck, boat and bulldozer. Cranes lifted medical workers into some homes and removed stranded residents from others.

Zeljka Cvijanovic, prime minister of Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic, compared the devastation to Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, in which 100,000 people died. “The damage is such that we cannot recall even after the war,” she told reporters.

In Croatia, the government said one person had died, and two were missing in flooded villages in an eastern corner of the country near Bosnia and Serbia. The army used amphibious vehicles to help evacuate some 3,000 people.

“I carried my kids out on my back, then waited 12 hours to be rescued myself,” said 40-year-old Obrenovac resident Dragan Todorovic, who spent the night in a Belgrade sports hall with dozens of other families. “The house was new, built two years ago for 100,000 euros. What now?”

SAVASTEPE, Turkey — Turkish rescue workers have retrieved the bodies of the last two missing miners in the nation’s worst mining disaster, putting the final death toll at 301, the energy minister said Saturday.

Taner Yildiz said 485 miners escaped or were rescued after Tuesday’s explosion and fire that devastated a coal mine in Soma, western Turkey.

“All corners of the mine were searched by a large team and there was no other body or living person,” he said. “Until today we had focused on search and rescue efforts. Now we will be focusing on investigations, on what will happen about production.”

“We won’t be leaving [Soma] because the search efforts are ending,” he added. “There will be psychological and social support.”

Government and mining officials have insisted that the disaster was not due to negligence and that the mine was inspected regularly. Akin Celik, the mine’s operations manager, has said thick smoke from the underground fire killed many miners who had no gas masks. High levels of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have been a problem for rescue workers as well.

But one miner, 24-year-old Erdal Bicak, told The Associated Press that he believes the disaster was due to the mining company’s negligence.

“The company is guilty,” Bicak said. He said managers had machines that measure methane gas levels: “The new gas levels had gotten too high and they didn’t tell us in time.”

Yildiz said it is too early to say why the explosion occurred.