According to local officials, thousands more peasants will be evacuated after towns in southern Ukraine flooded as a result of damage to the Nova Kakhovka dam.
After water overwhelmed the Nova Kakhovka dam and flooded streets and town squares, hundreds of people were evacuated from communities along the southern Dnipro River in Ukraine.
The structure at the southernmost point of the enormous Kakhovka Reservoir collapsed on Tuesday, unleashing a torrent of water that worsened the situation for thousands of people who are trapped in the middle of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
While Russian officials blamed Ukrainian bombing, Kiev claimed that Russian soldiers were responsible for blowing up the dam and hydroelectric power station in a region of southern Ukraine that Moscow has occupied for more than a year. The statements could not be independently verified.
The dam failure, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is the "biggest man-made environmental disaster in Europe in decades."
In a video presentation to a gathering of European nations in the Bucharest Nine group, he declared: "It is physically impossible to blow it up somehow from the outside with shelling." They mined it. It was mined and blown destroyed by the Russian occupants.
Video shared on social media demonstrates catastrophic flooding in the nearby Russian-controlled town of Nova Kakhovka.
According to Vladimir Leontyev, the city's newly-installed Russian mayor, the water levels had risen to more than 11 metres (36 feet) and several inhabitants had been transported to hospitals, according to the Russian TASS news agency. 900 individuals, he claimed, had been evacuated.
53 evacuation buses were dispatched, according to Leontyev, to transport residents of Nova Kakhovka and two neighbouring communities to safety.
He remarked, "We are setting up temporary housing facilities with hot meals.
The Kakhovka power station's machine room, according to journalist Yulia Shapovalova, was "under water" when she reported from Moscow.
The three districts of Nova Kakhovka, Golo Pristan, and Oleshky, which are part of the partially controlled Kherson area, are being evacuated, according to the Russian-installed authority. The latter two are located across the Dnipro River from Kherson, the regional capital that is governed by Ukraine.
Residents said that the water levels had already risen by more than a metre (3.3 feet) and were anticipated to do so further.
Oleksandr Syomyk, a resident of Kherson, remarked as he stood next to the swollen river, "The water flow in the Dnipro River and its tributaries is very powerful."
"By one metre, the water level increased. We'll have to wait and see, but we're hoping for the best.
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