“This is a disaster, we have never experienced such a thing”, the AFP news agency quoted Skopje Mayor Koce Trajanovski as saying. Other villages in the northeastern part of Macedonia were cut off from travel due to landslides caused by the heavy rain.
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An emergency has been declared in the capital, and special police and army units have been deployed.
Hundreds of homes and vehicles were destroyed by the floods, roads were impassable and several areas were without electricity.
Many homes on the northern outskirts of Skopje, as well as in the centre of the Macedonian capital city, were underwater following the deluge on the night of August 6.
About 1,000 people were taken to safety and many of them were suffering from serious injuries.
Skopje’s city council held an emergency session and made a decision to provide financial help to victims’ families, giving 180,000 denars ($3,260) to each.
A flooded vehicle is pictured in a ditch by a motorway, after an overnight storm near the village of Stajkovci, just east of Skopje, Macedonia, Sunday, Aug. 7, 2016.
Torrential rains had swept away a section of the ring road around Skopje and some cars had been carried hundreds of metres into nearby fields, a Reuters reporter said.
Authorities said at least 5,000 people would need urgently food and water.
Health authorities have advised residents and tourists in the worst hit areas to use only bottled water or water from public authority cisterns for drinking and cooking. A highway linking the capital city Zagreb to the southern coast was closed.
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Croatia also was hit by bad weather, with strong winds leading to serious traffic disruptions.
