A dam in the Russian controlled part of southern Ukraine has been damaged by shelling, leading to flooding in the area already hit by months of conflict.
Both Ukrainian and Russian officials blamed each other for destroying the Kakhovka dam in the Kherson region.
Ukraine’s military said that Russian forces blew up the dam.
“The Kakhovka (dam) was blown up by the Russian occupying forces,” the South command of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said on Tuesday on its Facebook page.
“The scale of the destruction, the speed and volumes of water, and the likely areas of inundation are being clarified.”
Russian news agencies said the dam, controlled by Russian forces, had been destroyed in shelling while a Russian-installed official said it was a “terrorist attack”.
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The dam was built in 1956 on the Dnipro river as part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant and supplies water to the Crimean peninsula and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is also under Russian control.
Russia’s TASS state news agency cited a Moscow-backed official in the Zaporizhzhia region saying there was no “critical danger” yet to the nuclear plant.
This story originally appeared on Skynews
