2023-06-13 12:51:36
A week after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine, the number of flood victims has continued to rise. Authorities on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the Kherson region reported 10 dead and 20 injured on Tuesday. 42 people are still missing, said the head of the Kherson military administration, Olexander Prokudin, on Telegram. On Monday, the Ukrainian authorities had spoken of six fatalities.
Due to the lower water level in the Kakhovka reservoir, the Crimean Canal, which is intended to supply drinking water to the Russian-occupied Crimea, is now also dry. Dnipro, Zaporizhia, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions will also face water shortages for “at least a year,” Ihor Syrota, director general of power plant operator Ukrhydroenergo, told Radio Svoboda, Ukrinform reported on Tuesday.
According to the Russian occupiers, the number of dead also rose from 8 to 17 on the southern bank of the Dnipro River, which is controlled by Moscow. Since the occupied towns are particularly badly affected by the floods, it is feared that there are actually significantly more victims .
According to official information, 2,757 people, including 263 children, have been brought to safety by Ukrainian rescue operations. In 133 cases, Ukrainian helpers managed to rescue residents from the occupied side of the river. Prokudin accused the Russian occupiers of doing too little to rescue civilians in occupied flood areas.
The large dam in the city of Nowa Kachowka was destroyed last Tuesday. Huge masses of water then flowed out of the adjacent reservoir and flooded numerous places, including the regional capital of Kherson. Ukraine, which has been defending itself against a Russian war of aggression for more than 15 months, accuses Russia of having blown up the structure. Moscow denies that.
The situation is catastrophic in many places. At the same time, the water level began to drop slightly. In the city of Cherson, for example, according to official information, it was still 2.9 meters on Tuesday morning. At about the same time the day before, it had been 12 feet.
More and more war relics are appearing in the wet mud of the reservoir, which is now three quarters empty, the Archyde.com news agency reported. In addition to the remains of Russian S-300 rockets, human skeletons were also found. One of them with a helmet “similar to those worn by Nazi soldiers,” according to a video released by the Ukrainian news agency UNIA on Sunday. This also brings back memories of the fact that retreating Soviet soldiers had already blown up what was then the Dnipro Dam near Zaporizhia in 1941 in order to slow down the German advance.
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