Page 3 - Afld News Today

Britain cannot yet say Russia is responsible for the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday during a visit to the United States.

Blasts at a Soviet-era dam in the Russian controlled part of southern Ukraine on Tuesday unleashed floodwaters across the war zone, according to both Ukrainian and Russian forces who blamed each other for blowing-up the dam.

A gaping hole punched in Ukraine's Nova Kakhovka dam that unleashed a wall of floodwater means that the canal which has traditionally met most of Crimea's water needs is receiving drastically less water, the Kremlin warned on Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russian forces on Tuesday of blowing up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station after mining the facility, and said Moscow must be held to account for a "terrorist attack".

The breach of a huge dam on the front-line Dnipro river has muddied the picture for a much-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian invaders and threatens an environmental disaster for civilians living in the war zone.

The Geneva Conventions and its protocols explicitly ban war-time attacks on "installations containing dangerous forces" such as dams due to the risk posed to civilians, a prohibition likely to come into focus after the destruction of a huge Ukrainian dam.

Italy approved an emergency relief package worth more than 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) to help flood-hit areas in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pledged to support the recovery of flood-hit areas of northern Italy on Sunday after returning early from the G7 summit in Japan to see the damage first hand.

Italy's Emilia Romagna region will recover from the devastating floods that hit this week by taking from lessons learned from the 2012 earthquake, its governor said Friday, as the death toll from the disaster rose to 14.

U.S. rock legend Bruce Springsteen came under criticism in Italy for going ahead with a concert in Ferrara on Thursday evening after the northern Emilia-Romagna region was battered by floods that left at least nine people dead.