Huge dam destroyed in Ukraine war zone

A torrent of water burst through a massive dam on the Dnipro River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine yesterday, flooding a swathe of the war zone and forcing villagers to flee.

Ukraine accused Russia of blowing up the Nova Kakhovka dam in a deliberate war crime. The Kremlin said it was Ukraine that had sabotaged the dam, to distract attention from the launch of a major counteroffensive Moscow says is faltering. Some Russian-installed officials said the dam had burst on its own.

Neither side offered immediate public evidence of who was to blame. The Geneva Conventions explicitly ban targeting dams in war, because of the danger to civilians.

By mid-morning in the city of Kherson in Ukrainian government-controlled territory downstream from the dam, a pier on a tributary of the Dnipro had already been submerged.

Lidia Zubova, 67, waiting for a train out of the city after abandoning her inundated village of Antonivka, told Reuters: "Our local school and stadium downtown were flooded... The road was completely flooded, our bus got stuck."

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko accused Russia of shelling areas from where people were being evacuated and said two police officers were wounded.

Russia also carried out a fresh wave of overnight air strikes on Kyiv. Ukraine said its air defence systems had downed more than 20 cruise missiles on their approach to the capital.

The Shebekino district of Russia's Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border came under renewed shelling, local authorities said. Anti-government Russian fighters based in Ukraine claim to have captured villages there.

On the Russian-controlled bank of the Dnipro, the Moscow-installed mayor of Nova Kakhovka said water levels had risen to 11 metres after the destruction of the dam. Residents reached by telephone there told Reuters that some had decided to stay despite being ordered out by occupying Russians.

The Kazkova Dibrova zoo on the Russian-held riverbank was completely flooded and all 300 animals were dead, a representative said via the zoo's Facebook account.

The dam supplies water to a wide area of southern Ukrainian farmland, including the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, as well as cooling the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said there is "no immediate nuclear safety risk at the plant."

An expanse of countryside lies in the flood plain below, with low-lying villages on the Russian-held southern bank particularly vulnerable.

"Russian terrorists. The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land," President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

The United Nations does not have any independent information on how a Ukrainian dam burst, but "one thing is clear, it is another devastating consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said yesterday.