KYIV (Reuters) -Russian shelling wounded at least nine people in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Thursday as residents were being evacuated because of flooding caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, Ukraine’s interior ministry said.
The Prosecutor General’s office initially said one person had been killed by the Russian shelling but later said no deaths had been reported.
In a statement on the Telegram messaging app, the interior ministry said the shelling had begun “precisely during the evacuation of citizens whose homes were flooded”.
It reiterated accusations that Russia has abandoned people in territory it has occupied in the Kherson region, adding: “And it continues to prevent Ukraine from saving the most valuable – human lives.”
The Prosecutor General’s office said it had opened a war crimes investigation and that another four people had been wounded in a nearby village.
A Reuters reporter in Kherson said he could hear what appeared to be artillery fire. Russia, which began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, has denied targeting civilians though it has bombarded cities across Ukraine.
Kherson lies on the Dnipro, about 60 km (37 miles) downstream from the Kakhovka dam.
Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said earlier on Thursday that 68% of the flooded territory in the Kherson region was on the Russian-occupied left bank of the Dnipro River.
Russia has accused Ukrainian forces of shelling rescue workers in Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson region, and each side blames the other for the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station and dam on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Dan Peleschuk, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
