SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea's president pledged today to disband the coast guard amid mounting criticism of its failure to save hundreds of passengers trapped last month in a sinking ferry. Critics said President Park Geun-hye was trying to shift attention from her mishandling of one of South Korea's deadliest disasters in decades.

The country's coast guard is a nonmilitary agency and does not patrol the maritime frontier with North Korea, which is done by the navy. Still, a move to abolish the independent coast guard in a peninsula country surprised many.

The agency has faced withering criticism that it acted slowly and unprofessionally in botched rescue and search efforts. The April 16 sinking has left more than 300 people dead or missing.

“We failed to rescue students who we could have saved,” Park said. “The ultimate responsibility for not properly dealing with this incident is mine.”

But Park also held the coast guard responsible for the high death toll. She called the coast guard's rescue work a failure and said swifter, more aggressive action in the initial stages of the sinking could have saved more lives.

SOMA, Turkey — Sensors noted high levels of toxic gas inside a coal mine days before the disaster that killed 301 workers in Turkey but company officials took no action, Turkish news reports said today.Prosecutors, meanwhile, formally arrested two more people for the devastating mine fire in the western town of Soma, raising the number of suspects facing charges of negligent death to five. Those detained included executives and supervisors at mine owner Soma Komur Isletmeleri A.S., prosecutors say.Chief prosecutor Bekir Sahiner said 25 people were initially detained as part of the probe, but several were released without charges while eight others were released but could be charged later. Authorities were still questioning others, including the company's CEO, Can Gurkan, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.The Hurriyet, HaberTurk and other Turkish newspapers said prosecutors and inspectors probing the worst mining disaster in Turkey's history had seized data from the mine that indicated sensors showed high gas levels inside the mine as early as two days before the May 13 disaster. The reports say company officials did not record these high levels on log books and took no precautionary actions.

BELGRADE, Serbia — Belgrade braced for a river water surge today that threatened to inundate Serbia's main power plant and cause major power cuts in the crisis-stricken country as the Balkans struggle with the consequences of the worst flooding in southeastern Europe in more than a century.At least 17 people died in Serbia in the five days of flooding caused by unprecedented torrential rain, laying waste to entire towns and villages in the Balkans and sending tens of thousands of people out of their homes, authorities said. At least another 17 died in Bosnia, but the death toll is expected to rise as floodwaters recede in some locations, laying bare the full scale of the damage.The coal-fired Nikola Tesla power plant supplies electricity for half of Serbia and most of Belgrade.