Kakhovka dam blast toll: 32 dead, 39 missing
After the Russian forces blew up the Kakhovka HPP dam, 32 deaths have been confirmed, while 39 persons remain missing.
That’s according to Vladyslav Dudar with the Main Department of Mine Action, Civil Defense, and Environmental Security at the Ministry of Defense, who spoke at a briefing on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
"For the time being, 32 people have been confirmed dead and 28 injured, and the whereabouts of 39 persons remain unknown," he said.
According to him, the first challenge after the explosion was the flooding of territories. Dudar noted that the big problem was that more than 68% of the flooded area is under Russian occupation so the civilian death toll remains unclear.
"In total, 612 square kilometers have been e flooded, of which 32 percent is de-occupied territory. A total of 2,783 people were evacuated. Almost 65% of all forests across Kherson region were flooded," said Dudar.
The official noted that following the dam breach, an uncontrolled drift of landmines and unexploded ordnance was observed.
"As of today, the efforts have been completed on clearing the flooded areas of explosive objects. It is very difficult to answer the question of where exactly the mines drifted in the occupied areas but it could lead to the mine contamination of territories that were previously deemed clear," said the officer.
According to him, the initial forecasts suggested that the Kakhovka Reservoir would dry up by more than 80%.
"In principle, that's how it turned out - on June 11, we saw a report that the total volume of the Kakhovka Reservoir decreased by 72.5%, or over 14 cubic kilometers, which is a very large amount of water that got into the Black Sea," he noted.
Dudar said that after June 11, monitoring at the Nikopol observation post was suspended due to the loss of hydrological communication.
"Therefore, it is difficult to reliably state the current volume of the reservoir. According to recent satellite images, we can say that the Dnipro River has returned to its natural bed. And now, out of the total area of the Kakhovka Reservoir - more than 2,155 square kilometers - the total volume of water is approximately 120 square kilometers," said the official.
The First Deputy Head of the State Environmental Inspection, Dmytro Zaruba, noted that after the destruction of the Kakhovka HPP, calculations based on the data received from the Space Agency say approximately 72% of the volume of water from the Kakhovka Reservoir is gone.
As reported, on the night of June 6, the Russian army blew up the Kakhovka HPP dam amid fears of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the area.