Three people, including a 13-year-old boy, have drowned and two are missing in floods that hit Romania over the weekend, Interior Minister Gabriel Oprea says.
Hardest-hit was the south, where rivers swelled following heavy rainfall and melting of snow in the mountains. Emergency services reinforced the banks with sandbags in many places, as more rain was expected in the coming days.
Flooding also happened in Romania's Balkan neighbours Bulgaria and Serbia.
In Bulgaria, several municipalities declared a state of emergency as water from the river Lom flooded houses, roads and bridges, the BTA news agency reported on Monday.
Landslides caused by running water disrupted traffic on several roads in the south.
Serbian authorities said on Monday the situation was critical following flooding in central municipalities of Lucani and in villages along the Ovcar gorge, as well as in Aleksinac in the east.
Hundreds of people had to be evacuated from their homes and more may yet have to be moved out of the way as waters are expected to continue rising in western, central and eastern Serbia in the coming days.
Devastating floods, which claimed dozens of lives, occurred in the Balkans in 2005, 2006, 2010 and 2012. Most of the casualties were people living in rural areas in Romania and Bulgaria.
