SARAJEVO — A blanket of fog and smog descended on the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo this week, reducing daytime visibility to a few dozen metres and forcing residents indoors as pollution levels surged to hazardous levels.

Only India's capital New Delhi, which has 100 times more people than Sarajevo, clocked worse air quality on Wednesday, according to IQAir, which tracks pollution levels in cities across the world.

IQAir has consistently graded Sarajevo's air quality as "very unhealthy" or "hazardous" this week, two of its worst measures. Street lights have been blotted out by the smog and road traffic has reduced significantly.

Its chart ranked Sarajevo as Europe's most polluted city, with Skopje in North Macedonia the next worst at number 10.

Sarajevo, with a population of about 315,000, has almost no polluting industries, as they were destroyed during Bosnia's war in the 1990s.

But the city, nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains and hills, has long suffered from a phenomenon known as temperature inversion which presses colder air and pollutants from vehicles and fossil fuels closer to the ground.

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