A severe drought in Europe revealed the hulls of dozens of German warships that sank in the Danube River near the Serbian city of Prahovo during World War II, ABC News reported on Friday.
Officials said the ships sunk in the Danube were part of Nazi Germany’s Black Sea Fleet in 1944, before being withdrawn after advancing Soviet forces at the time.
Serbian officials say ships still affect the river, often blocking river crossings when water levels are low.
Now, due to the drought, more than 20 ships have landed, many of them still loaded with ammunition and explosives. Officials say these vessels pose a threat to navigation on the Danube.
Officials say there are increasing problems for cargo boats, affecting the vital transport of coal that supplies two-thirds of Serbia’s electricity.
Serbia’s hydropower has been halved in the past two months due to poor water flow, officials told Green Energy Balkans. The country is currently suffering from the effects of the war in Ukraine on energy supplies.
Last March, the Serbian government contracted a private company to remove some of the structures, munitions and explosives from the river, costing about $30 million, according to the Ministry of Infrastructure.
“The German fleet went through a huge environmental disaster that threatens us Brahov residents,” Velimir Trajelovic, 74, a pensioner from Brahov who has written a book about German ships, told Reuters.
A severe drought across Europe has reduced the water levels of rivers and lakes and exposed underwater treasures, Reuters reported.
In Spain, which suffered its worst drought in decades, archaeologists were delighted by the discovery of a prehistoric stone circle called the Spanish Stonehenge, usually filled by a dam.
The stone circle, officially known as the Dolmen of Guadalberl, is now fully exposed in a corner of the Valdecanas Reservoir in the central province of Caceres, where officials say the water level has dropped to 28 percent of the reservoir’s capacity.
The stone circle was discovered by German archaeologist Hugo Obermayer in 1926, but the area was submerged in 1963 in a rural development project led by Francisco Franco. Since then, it has only been seen in its entirety four times.
Memories of past droughts in Germany have been revived by the reappearance of so-called “hunger stones” along the Rhine. A number of these stones have appeared along the banks of Germany’s largest river in the past few weeks.
Some of these stones have dates and initials of some people’s names, and some see their reappearance as a warning and reminder of the hardships that people have faced in previous droughts. Dates on stones in Worms, south of Frankfurt, Reindorf and near Leverkusen include 1947, 1959, 2003 and 2018.
Source: Lebanon Debate
