They have been swallowed by water for three days and the situation continues to worsen. The dam blastby Nova KakhovKa puts hundreds of thousands to the limit of Ukrainians, many of them, without access to drinking water.

After confirmation of thefirst deaths from the floodthe UN warns that the humanitarian disaster can reach unprecedented proportions and that it will most likely “get worse in the next few hours.”

Many residents still remain incommunicado. As the water level continues to rise and inundate more towns, the number of people no essential services Will trigger.

For now there is more than 6,000 evacuees. President Volodímir Zelenski traveled today to Kherson, the most affected region, where he personally verified the damage and visited the wounded in the hospital.

The reality is bleak. There are dozens of houses flooded and 600 square kilometers have been flooded. Agricultural crops have been spoiled, putting the food supply at serious risk in the short and medium term.

Water also brings with it the danger of disease spread and it is that dozens of animals have died, contaminating the canalization system and drinking water.

The UN assesses the damage

UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric has said the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and five other agencies are assessing the damage and the humanitarian response with local NGOs and authorities in Kherson, where the dam is located.

The overflow of the Kakhovka dam has flooded dozens of houses and more than 10,000 hectares of agricultural land on the west bank of the Dnieper River, which bisects the Kherson province and whose eastern bank is controlled by Russia.

“They tell us that the disaster probably it will get worse in the next few hoursas the water level continues to rise and more towns and villages are flooded. That will affect people’s access to essential services and seriously increase health risks,” she explained.

The spokesman noted that Martin Griffiths, the emergency coordinator, conveyed to Security Council members that the destruction of the dam is “possibly the most important incident of damage to civil infrastructure” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, in February 2022.