# Bosnia floods kill 16 in Jablanica as rescue crews dig through rubble
On Oct. 4, 2024, torrential rain caused floods and landslides that killed at least 16 people in Jablanica and nearby areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the supplied Al Jazeera report. The town, about 70 km southwest of Sarajevo, was hit so hard that roads and rail links were destroyed and the municipality was cut off from the rest of the country.
Local administration spokesman Darko Jukan said at least 14 people had died in and around Jablanica before officials later reported that two more bodies had been found. He also said many people were still missing, and the civil defense of the Bosniak-Croat Federation warned that the death toll could still rise. The destruction was severe enough that houses were reduced to rubble and emergency responders had to work around collapsed infrastructure rather than simply reach it.
The report described the emergency response as a full-scale rescue operation. The cantonal government requested military help for the wider Jablanica area, and engineers, rescue units and a helicopter were deployed. One helicopter was used to evacuate injured people, including 17 people from a mental health hospital, while EUFOR also helped transfer some of the wounded. In nearby areas, floodwaters submerged towns and left ambulances and police vehicles stranded when roads washed away.
The scale of the disaster led Bosnian media to compare it with the country's worst flooding since 2014, when more than 20 people died. Drone footage showed villages and towns underwater, while the town of Kiseljak was also inundated after a river burst its banks. The source said neighboring Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia had also issued severe weather warnings or reported flooding, showing that the storm system was regional rather than isolated to one valley.
For Jablanica, the immediate story was about access as much as death tolls. With roads and rail lines gone, rescue teams had trouble getting in and out, and local officials said traffic was entirely halted. That meant the operation became a race against time in a place where landslides had already buried homes, separated communities and left authorities trying to account for the missing while the water was still receding.
Jablanica's isolation added urgency to every rescue effort. With the main road and railway cut, ambulance teams could not simply drive in and out, and local authorities had to rely on helicopters and improvised transport to reach injured people. That logistical pressure is part of why this flood is likely to be remembered as one of Bosnia's defining disasters of recent years: it destroyed homes, but it also cut the country off from the places where help normally arrives.
The most difficult part of the Jablanica response was that damage to roads and railways slowed every other rescue effort. That left helicopters, boats and military help doing the work that roads normally would, which is why the flooding is likely to be remembered not only for the death toll but for the way it physically isolated whole communities.
