Pictures: A cloud of smoke covers Sarajevo and residents face suffocation

Air traffic stopped, and the authorities asked citizens to stay in their homes in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, after a cloud of smoke hung over the city on Thursday.
Swiss air quality technology company IQ Air, which assesses air quality in real time, rated Sarajevo’s air quality index at a “highly unhealthy” level of 225, making the city the third most polluted city in the world.

We are suffocating

“This is terrible. We are suffocating, especially people with heart problems,” said Hagra Subasek, a citizen of retirement age.
“We can barely breathe,” he added.
Sarajevo and other cities in the Balkans usually suffer from severe pollution during the winter, as they rely on coal and wood for heating.