More than 100,000 told to evacuate as the worst flooding in 70 years hits Russia and Kazakhstan

Russia and Kazakhstan ordered more than 100,000 people to evacuate yesterday after swiftly melting snow swelled rivers beyond bursting point in the worst flooding in the region for at least 70 years.

The deluge overwhelmed many settlements in the Ural mountains, Siberia and areas of Kazakhstan close to the Ural and Tobol rivers, which local officials said had risen in a matter of hours to their highest levels on record.

The Ural, Europe's third-largest river, which flows through Russia and Kazakhstan into the Caspian Sea, burst through an embankment damon Friday, flooding the city of Orsk, south of the Ural mountains.

Water levels downstream in Orenburg, a city with a population of about 550,000, were also rising.

Sirens in Kurgan, a city on the Tobol, warned people to evacuate immediately. An emergency was also declared in Tyumen, a major oilproducing region in western Siberia.

"The difficult days are still ahead for the Kurgan and Tyumen regions," the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "There is a lot of water coming."