Israel Sending Aid to Serbia and Bosnia Flood Victims

Image by Getty Images

By JTA May 18, 2014

Israel is sending aid to help rescue efforts in Serbia and Bosnia, where record floods have submerged cities and left more than two dozen dead and thousands homeless.

Local media reported that Israel sent a first shipment of emergency aid this weekend including medicine, food, blankets and rain gear, and will soon send pumps. The aid was delivered by helicopter because cities were cut off by the flooding.

The town of Doboj in Bosnia’s Republic of Serbia region, which has a small Jewish community, was especially hard hit, with the city center totally under water and at least 20 dead, the town mayor told local media. Doboj’s Jewish community building, which has a synagogue on an upper floor, is located in the town center.

Jasna Ciric, the president of the Jewish community in Nis, Serbia, said that she understood that all members of the Doboj Jewish community were safe but some were trapped in their homes without electricity, water or telephones.

Aleksander Nikolic, the assistant chief representative of the Republic of Serbia in Israel, said the Israeli aid was a “very human gesture” and “proof of friendship in a most difficult moment,” according to local media.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO