Fears of humanitarian disaster after major dam destruction in Ukraine

Kathmandu: Thousands of Ukrainians are fleeing the city of Kherson, as well as towns and villages downstream of the Kakhovka dam, trying desperately to get ahead of rising flood waters.

Ukraine is continuing to evacuate thousands of people Wednesday after an attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam, a major Russian-held dam in southern Ukraine, unleashed a torrent of water, flooding two dozen villages and sparking fears of a humanitarian disaster.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine had left hundreds of thousands of people without normal access to drinking water.

‘The destruction of one of the largest water reservoirs in Ukraine is absolutely deliberate … Hundreds of thousands of people have been left without normal access to drinking water,’ Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app.

A state of emergency was imposed in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine’s Kherson region following the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported on Wednesday.

The agency, citing emergency services, said about 2,700 houses were flooded and almost 1,300 people had been evacuated. At least seven people were missing, Moscow-backed officials said.

Ukraine and Russia blame each other for the collapse of the massive dam, which sent floodwaters across a swathe of the war zone and forced thousands to flee.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday that the partial destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine was ‘another devastating consequence’ of Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.

An attack on the major Russian-held dam in southern Ukraine unleashed a torrent of water that flooded a small city, inundated two dozen villages and sparked the evacuation of 17,000 people.

‘Today’s tragedy is yet another example of the horrific price of war on people,’ Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters in New York, ‘The floodgates of suffering have been overflowing for more than a year. That must stop.’

‘We have all seen the tragic images coming out today of the monumental humanitarian, economic and ecological catastrophe in the Kherson region of Ukraine,’ the Secretary-General added.