Devastating floods ravage Kazakhstan and Russia

More than 125,000 people have been displaced by flooding in Russia's southern Ural region and northern Kazakhstan, authorities said on Monday.

Swiftly melting snow swelled several rivers in the region last week, including the Ural, Europe's third-largest river, with authorities saying that water levels had risen by meters in a matter of hours to the highest levels ever recorded.

Authorities said floodwaters continue to rise, posing further threats.

Power and water supply interrupted

Some 1,000 homes were flooded in the North Kazakhstan region, and over 5,000 people had been evacuated, local officials said. There have been interruptions in power and water supply in the region.

People were seen queuing up in front of water trucks moving from one neighbourhood to another in the badly affected city of Petropavlovsk in North Kazakhstan. The main reservoir supplying the city with drinkable water has been flooded.

Just a few hundred kilometres over the border, Russia's Kurgan, a region of 800,000 people at the confluence of the Ural mountains and Siberia, was grappling with flooding and rising water levels in the Tobol River.

"The city of Kurgan itself will be next," Kurgan Governor Vadim Shumko said. "The flow of the Tobol is accelerating. The water level in it is constantly rising," he added.
 

Floods were also inundating homes in the Tomsk region in the southwestern part of Siberia, regional officials said on Telegram.

ac/rm (Reuters,dpa)