Thousands of the devices, each filled with 7 kg of explosives, have flooded into residential areas in the region.
The explosion of the Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine has resulted in thousands of undetonated landmines and unexploded ordnances flooding into residential areas from the battlefield, the Red Cross has warned.
More than 40,000 people have already been evacuated from towns and cities surrounding the dam on the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast. However, as crisis teams tackle the flooding, there are questions about how inhabitable the environment will be should residents one day return.
Humanitarian workers talk of the potentially deadly landscape that may await them as landmines deployed by the Russian military to both defend their positions and slow any Ukrainian counteroffensive have been washed downstream into the heart of the Ukrainian-controlled city of Kherson.
“Until now, we have roughly guessed where the mines might be and where we shouldn’t go. Now we have no idea,” Erik Tollefsen, head of the Red Cross’s weapon contamination unit, told AFP.
As a result of the flooding caused by the dam's blow-up landmines are being washed up to the shores of the Dnipro river. Some of them detonate pic.twitter.com/Khlyc9CVab
— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) June 6, 2023