IRELAND IS PROVIDING €50,000 worth of humanitarian assistance to organisations working to restore normality in the Balkans following cataclysmic floods.

The death toll rose by six to 57 on Friday as people returned home to salvage what belongings they could amid a huge clean-up operation.

The task facing the thousands of rescue workers, volunteers and soldiers is immense, with dozens of towns and villages devastated by the region’s worst natural disaster in living memory.

Vast areas still remain under water, and tens of thousands of the nearly 150,000 people evacuated in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia — the biggest exodus since the wars of the 1990s — were stuck in shelters.

Plastered with mud

In many areas, homes, schools, shops and roads were plastered with mud and littered with everything from bashed-up cars to bloated dead cows. Health officials were spraying disinfectant to prevent disease.

Ireland has stepped in to do what it can and is providing funding intended to be use to provide psychological support and counselling services to children affected by the floods, and also for vaccines.

The funding will be provided to World Vision Ireland to support their work in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“The funding will be used to provide psychological support and counselling services to children affected by the floods and to purchase vaccines to prevent the outbreak of infectious diseases,” Minister Costello said in a statement.

He added that ‘essential relief items’ could be provided to the region if humanitarian organisations request such assistance.