• Breaking ice crushes boats on Danube in sudden Serbia thaw

    Andrej Isakovic / AFP - Getty Images

    A man takes a picture of big chunks of melting ice moving on the Danube River in Belgrade, Serbia, on Feb. 20, 2012.

    Darko Vojinovic / AP

    People break the ice on a frozen part of the Danube in Belgrade on Feb. 20, 2012. Big chunks of melting ice have damaged hundreds of small boats and several restaurants located on rafts, officials said Monday.

    The Associated Press reports from Belgrade, Serbia — Big chunks of melting ice moving on the Danube River have damaged hundreds of small boats and several restaurants located on rafts, officials said Monday.

    The thick ice, which had closed hundreds of miles of Europe's busy waterway during the region's recent cold snap, started moving Sunday afternoon because of rising temperatures.

    As ice floes up to 1.6 feet thick began to break up in the Belgrade area, hundreds of parked boats crashed into each other and several barges were swept away, officials said. Read the full story.

  • Vadim Ghirda / AP

    People ride horse-drawn carts loaded with firewood as they cross the Danube river, made possible by an ongoing drought which has caused a drop in water levels, in Calarasi, southern Romania, on Dec. 11, 2011. The waters of the mighty Danube are so low that dozens of cargo ships are stuck, stranded in ghostly fog or wedged into sand banks on what is normally one of eastern Europe's busiest transport routes.

    Crossing the mighty Danube by horse-drawn cart

    Previously on PhotoBlog: The Danube is running dry.

  • The Danube is running dry

    Ivan Milutinovic / Reuters

    A boat is stranded on dry land along the Danube river bank in Belgrade on Dec. 2, 2011. Record low water levels have pushed up power prices across the Balkans and may force local utilities to further boost expensive power imports to meet demand.

    AP reports

    "This is a disaster," said Branko Savic, the manager of a privately owned Danube shipping company in Serbia that he says is operating at only a third of its capacity. "Traffic on the Danube is practically nonexistent. . . We are in dire need of enormous amounts of water, rain, or melting snow in order to better the situation."

    "In my many years of experience as a boat captain, I don't remember a drought as harsh as this one," said Anton Balasz, whose ship is among those stuck where exposed sand banks are preventing boats from passing. Read more...

    Srdjan Suki / EPA

    Vessels carrying more than 1,000 tons were blocked in this area of Belgrade earlier this week because the water level was lower than normal. For river traffic to resume water levels would have to rise by at least 19 inches, but meteorological services forecast no rain in the coming days.