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State Emergency Service: Nearly 1,300 people evacuated from Kherson Oblast after Kakhovka dam explosion

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State Emergency Service: Nearly 1,300 people evacuated from Kherson Oblast after Kakhovka dam explosion
State Emergency Service workers evacuate Kherson Oblast civilians by train after the Kakhovka dam was blown up by Russians on June 6, 2023. (Photo: State Emergency Service / Telegram) 

Editor's Note: The article originally stated that 1,000 people had been rescued as of 1:00 p.m. local time. It has been updated to accurately reflect the latest information provided by authorities.

The State Emergency Service reported that nearly 1,300 people have been evacuated from Kherson Oblast as of 3 p.m. local time after Russian forces blew up the Kakhovka dam on June 6.

Evacuation efforts are being carried out by the State Emergency Service in coordination with the police and local authorities.

According to preliminary information, 13 regional settlements on the Kyiv-controlled right bank of the Dnipro River and more than 260 houses have been flooded, the emergency service wrote.

Five temporary relief centers have been set up for evacuees in Kherson Oblast before being relocated to safer locations, according to the Interior Ministry.

Kherson Oblast Governor Oleksandr Prokudin earlier said that civilians will be transported by bus and train to Mykolaiv, Khmelnytskyi, Odesa, Kropyvnytskyi, Kyiv, and other cities.

Water levels are expected to continue rising for another 24 hours, so authorities will be working "around the clock" to aid civilians, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on national television.

The State Emergency Service has also issued a warning to civilians, urging them to remain vigilant and be on the lookout for any mines that may have been dislodged by the flooding.

Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant’s dam in the early hours of June 6, sparking a large-scale humanitarian and environmental disaster across southern Ukraine.

Russian forces destroy Kakhovka dam, triggering humanitarian disaster
The dam of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant across the Dnipro River, occupied by Russian forces, was destroyed on the morning of June 6, sparking a large-scale humanitarian and environmental disaster across southern Ukraine. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported early in the morning…
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Kate Tsurkan

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Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent. The U.S. publisher Deep Vellum published her co-translation of Ukrainian author Oleh Sentsov’s Diary of a Hunger Striker in 2024. Some of her other writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine.

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