KHERSON, Ukraine (Reuters) -- A torrent of water burst through a massive dam on the Dnipro River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine on Tuesday, 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.”
Ukrainian police released video of an officer carrying an elderly woman to safety and others rescuing dogs in villages being evacuated as the waters rose. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko accused Russia of shelling areas from where people were being evacuated and said two police officers were wounded.
On the Russian-controlled bank of the Dnipro, the Moscow-installed mayor of Nova Kakhovka said water levels had risen to 11 meters (36 feet). Residents reached by telephone there told Reuters that some had decided to stay despite being ordered out by Russians.
Yevheniya, a female resident, said the water was up to the knees of the Russian soldiers walking the main street in high rubber boots.
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 Crimean peninsula, as well as cooling the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
The vast reservoir behind the dam is one of the main geographic features of southern Ukraine, 240 km (150 miles) long and up to 23 km (14 miles) wide.
An expanse of countryside lies in the flood plain below, with low-lying villages on the Russian-held southern bank particularly vulnerable.
The dam’s destruction raised fears of a new humanitarian disaster in the centre of the war zone and transformed front lines just as Ukraine prepared to launch a long-awaited counteroffensive to drive Russian troops from its territory.
Russia has controlled the dam since early in its 15-month-old invasion, although Ukrainian forces recaptured the Dnipro’s northern bank last year. Both sides had long accused the other of plotting to destroy the dam.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blamed “deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side”.
“Apparently, this sabotage is also connected with the fact that having started large-scale offensive actions two days ago, now the Ukrainian armed forces are not achieving their goals.”
The UN nuclear watchdog said the Zaporizhzhia power plant, upriver on the reservoir’s Russian-held bank, should have enough water to cool its reactors for “some months” from a separate pond, even as the huge reservoir drains out.
Video showed water surging through the remains of the dam - which is 30 meters (yards) tall and 3.2 km (2 miles) long.
Some 22,000 people living across 14 settlements in the Kherson region are at risk of flooding, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted the Moscow-installed head of the region as saying.
The governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said there was a risk that water levels in the canal that carries fresh water to the Black Sea peninsula could fall. Crimea, which Russia has held since 2014, had sufficient water reserves for now and the risk would become clear in coming days.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview published on Saturday that Ukraine was poised to unleash its much-heralded major counteroffensive, using newly supplied Western battle tanks and armored vehicles.
Moscow has said the Ukrainian offensive began on Sunday and claimed to have repulsed a third day of Ukrainian advances.
Kyiv has maintained deliberate ambiguity about it though Zelenskiy hinted at successes. In an evening address before the dam broke, he hailed “the news we have been waiting for” claiming forward moves around Bakhmut, a ruined city Russia captured earlier this month.
Russia also carried out a fresh wave of overnight airstrikes on Kyiv. Ukraine said its air defense systems had downed more than 20 cruise missiles on their approach to the capital.