KHERSON
\nFloodwaters from a collapsed dam kept rising in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes in a major emergency operation that brought a dramatic new dimension to the war with Russia, now in its 16th month.
\nAmid the disaster response, artillery shelling rang out as people scrambled to get out of the danger zone, climbing onto military trucks or rafts.
\nA day after the dam\u2019s collapse, it remained unclear what caused it. Ukraine accused Russia of blowing up the dam wall, while Russia blamed Ukrainian shelling for the breach. Some experts said the collapse may have been an accident caused by wartime damage and neglect, although others said this was unlikely and argued that Russia might have had tactical military reasons to destroy the dam.
\nThe flood\u2019s force was expected to slacken as the day wore on, officials said Wednesday, but water levels were expected to rise by another meter (about 3 feet) over the following 20 hours and engulf more downriver areas along the banks of the Dnieper.
\nThe Kakhovka hydroelectric dam and reservoir, one of the largest in the world and essential for the supply of drinking water and irrigation to a huge area of southern Ukraine, lies in a part of the Kherson region occupied by the Kremlin\u2019s forces for the past year. The Dnieper River separates the warring sides there.
\nUkraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday accused Moscow of \u201cdeliberate destruction\u201d of the dam.
\n\u201cHundreds of thousands of people were left without normal access to drinking water,\u201d he said in a Telegram post.
\nSome local residents spent the night on rooftops. Others, scrambling to flee the rising waters, were evacuated by buses and trains with the belongings they could carry.
\n\u201cThe intensity of floods is slightly decreasing,\u201d Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of Kherson Regional Military administration, said in a video. \u201cHowever, due to the significant destruction of the dam, the water will keep coming.\u201d
\nHe said more than 1,800 houses were flooded along the Dnieper and that almost 1,500 people had been evacuated.
\nResidents sloshed through knee-deep waters in inundated homes as videos posted on social media showed scenes including rescue workers carrying people to safety, and what looked like the triangular roof of an entire building that had been uprooted drifting downstream. Footage taken from the air showed waters filling the streets of the Russian-controlled city of Nova Kakhovska on the eastern side of the river.
\nNova Kakhovska\u2019s Russia-appointed mayor, Vladimir Leontyev, said seven people were missing but early signs indicated that they could be alive. Officials in Russia-controlled parts of Kherson region said 900 Nova Kalhovka residents were evacuated, including 17 rescued from the tops of flooded buildings.
\nAddressing who might be to blame, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, noted its earlier assessment that \u201cthe Russians have a greater and clearer interest in flooding the lower Dnieper despite the damage to their own prepared defensive positions.\u201d
\nAmid speculation that Ukraine may have secretly started its long-anticipated counteroffensive, the ISW said Russian forces may think breaching the dam could cover a possible retreat and delay Ukraine\u2019s push.
\nExperts noted that the dam, about 70 kilometers to the east of the city of Kherson, was believed to be in disrepair and vulnerable to collapse as water was already brimming over when the wall gave way. It hadn\u2019t been producing power since November, according to officials.
\nBritain\u2019s Ministry of Defense, which has regularly issued updates about the war, said the Kakhovka reservoir was at \u201crecord high\u201d water levels before the breach. While the dam wasn\u2019t entirely washed away, the ministry warned that its structure \u201cis likely to deteriorate further over the next few days, causing additional flooding.\u201d
\nThe dam helps provide irrigation and drinking water to a wide swath of southern Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
\nUnderscoring the war\u2019s global repercussions, wheat prices jumped 3 percent after the collapse. Ukraine and Russia are key global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other food to Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia.
\nBoth sides warned of a looming environmental disaster from polluted waters, partly caused by oil leaking from the dam\u2019s machinery. The empty reservoir could later deprive farmland of irrigation.
\nOfficials from Russia and Ukraine, and the UN, have said that the damage will take days to assess, and warned of a long recovery period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KHERSON Floodwaters from a collapsed dam kept rising in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes in a major emergency operation that brought a dramatic new dimension to the war with Russia, now in its 16th month. Amid the disaster response, artillery shelling rang out as people scrambled to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-336123","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n