SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Hundreds of students protested in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo on Monday over the failure of authorities to take responsibility for the deaths of 27 people in devastating floods in early October or to promptly help survivors.
Heavy rain caused flooding and landslides that swept through parts of central and southern Bosnia and Herzegovina overnight on October 4, destroying homes, roads and bridges.
Nineteen people were killed in the southern village of Donja Jablanica alone, after an illegal quarry collapsed trapping people under heavy rocks. An investigation has yet to be launched.
The disaster has laid bare the difficulties of channelling funds in the fragmented Balkan country whose multiple governments have struggled to respond.
Authorities have been slow to start reconstruction work or to distribute aid donated by the European Union and other foreign governments.
“Where are the donations? Where is the rehabilitation? Where is transparency? Where is responsibility?” read a huge banner that protesters carried in front of the state parliament.
“The students arrived to ask for the accountability of all those who have directly or indirectly contributed to the death of 19 people after an illegal quarry above Donja Jablanica had slid,” said Imran Pasalic, president of the Sarajevo University Students Parliament.
Bosnia was ethnically divided after its devastating war in the 1990s, in which about 100,000 people had been killed, and is still struggling to overcome ethnic divides.
Some students said they were protesting in solidarity with students in neighbouring Serbia, who have held anti-government protests over a railway station disaster that killed 15 people in November and quickly ballooned into a political crisis.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Ros Russell)
