At least seven people are missing in floods resulting from the partial destruction of the Kakhovka dam in eastern Ukraine, authorities installed by Russia in the occupied Ukrainian regions reported Wednesday.
“Now we are looking for information about the missing person. We know for sure” that seven are missing, said the mayor of Kakhovka.
Rescue teams are on the scene and that the water level in the city is already starting to fall, although it is still “very significant”, said Vladimir Leontiev, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
In the #Kherson Nearly 800 people and more than 170 units of State Emergency Service equipment were involved in rescue work in the region. In the past day, 52 people have been rescued, including two children.
As of the morning of June 7, 1852 houses stood on the right bank of… pic.twitter.com/HrUWKpk5jg
– NEXTA (@nexta_tv) June 7, 2023
About 900 people were evacuated from the Kakhovka region, including 17 people who were rescued from rooftops when the water reached 12 meters. Authorities expect water levels to begin to drop within three days.
Ukrainian authorities said they were evacuating more than 17,000 people from the affected areas.
“More than 40,000 people are at risk of entering flooded areas. (…) Unfortunately, more than 25,000 civilians are in Russian territory,” Ukrainian Attorney General Andrey Kostin announced.
‘More than a thousand houses are under water’
The head of the military administration of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said 1,335 houses on the right bank of the Dnieper were flooded on Tuesday night.
“The most difficult situation occurs in the Korabelny district, in the city of Kherson. So far, the water level has risen by 3.5 meters, more than 1,000 houses are under water,” the deputy chief of staff said in a statement. the Ukrainian Presidency, Alexey Kouleba.
Evacuations will continue by bus and train during the day and for the next few days, Kouleba said.
“At this stage, 24 locations in Ukraine were under water,” said Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko.
In Geneva, the humanitarian agency of the The UN warned that the dam’s destruction could cause an environmental disaster and “seriously affect hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the frontline”.
Volunteers from the UAnimals initiative rescue animals #Kherson. pic.twitter.com/8MJh4QoKAs
– NEXTA (@nexta_tv) June 6, 2023
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, said during a meeting of the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the serious consequences of the catastrophe are already visible for thousands of people.
“The destruction of the dam is possibly the most significant incident of damage to civilian infrastructure since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,” he said.
The Kakhovka Dam is an important structure in southern Ukraine that supplies water to Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
Considered a priority target for the Russians at the start of the invasion, this hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper River is now on the front lines between Moscow-controlled regions and the rest of Ukraine.
Source: DN
