Russia shells Ukrainian city inundated by dam collapse

Russian forces Thursday shelled a southern Ukrainian city inundated by flooding in a catastrophic dam collapse, Ukrainian officials said, forcing a suspension of some rescue efforts hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to the area to assess the damage.

The fresh fighting came two days after the collapse of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River set off a scramble to evacuate residents in dozens of flooded areas and get aid to those still there.

Officials on both sides said at least 14 people were killed in the flooding. Thousands of others were homeless, and tens of thousands were without drinking water after the collapse. Kyiv accused Moscow of blowing up the dam and its hydropower plant, which the Kremlin's forces controlled, while Russia said Ukraine bombarded it.

The ensuing flooding has ruined crops, displaced land mines, wrought widespread environmental damage and set the stage for long-term electricity shortages. Exclusive drone footage captured by The Associated Press showed the ruined dam falling into the river and hundreds of homes, greenhouses and even a church submerged in the deluge.

Upriver from the dam, a supply of water used to cool Europe's largest nuclear power plant was nearing critically low levels, Ukraine's state hydroelectric company said. But the U.N.'s atomic energy watchdog on Thursday played down such concerns, saying that the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant could draw water to cool its shut-down reactors from levels below those previously seen to be critically low.

Zelenskyy's office said Moscow's forces also continued to shell Ukrainian-held areas near the nuclear plant, which is under Russian control.

The high water brought new misery and death to a country suffering uncounted...