Around 1,000 more households flooded in Russia’s Orenburg in past 24 hours

Around 1,000 households and 2,000 personal plots were flooded in Russia’s Orenburg over the past 24 hours, First Deputy Head of the Orenburg administration Alexey Kudinov told reporters.

"We are detecting the flooding of new territories. In total, another 1,000 households were flooded within 24 hours… and almost 2,000 plots," he noted.

Over the past 12 hours, the water level in the Ural River in Orenburg has not changed and reached 1,187 cm.

Russian emergency services on Saturday said they had evacuated thousands of people from the southern regions bordering Kazakhstan as flood water continued to rise.

Fast-rising temperatures have melted snow and ice, and along with heavy rain have caused a number of major rivers that pass through Russia and Kazakhstan to overflow this month.

In the city of Orenburg, one of the worst affected areas in Russia, the Ural River has breached its banks, submerging streets and residential areas and water levels continued to rise Saturday.

On Saturday afternoon, the river level reached almost 12 metres (39 feet), more than 2.5 metres above the level considered critical.

Regional governor Denis Pasler said in a press release Sunday evening that "as of today the situation remains complex. In Orenburg the flood is at the maximum peak."

The Ural River flows through the centre of Orenburg.

Flood water covered the embankment promenade and swirled around houses and an high-rise apartment blocks built close to the river, an AFP journalist saw.

More than 13,000 people have been evacuated from Orenburg and the surrounding region and more than 11,000 homes have been flooded, according to the emergency situations ministry.

Eldar Rakhmetov, a ministry official involved in the evacuation, told AFP that in Orenburg "there has been an increase in the number of homes flooded since this morning and more areas are being evacuated."

Local residents were using rubber dinghies to try to retrieve pets and belongings from flooded houses and some areas were left without power.

The emergency situations ministry said that in the Kurgan region further east, the level of the Tobol River was continuing to rise steeply and more than 6,000 people had been evacuated.

The governor, Vadim Shumkov, urged residents likely to be affected to leave now.

In the Russian city of Orsk in the Orenburg region, where a dam protecting the city from flooding broke this month, residents held rare protests this week over the local authorities' handling of the crisis.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting on the floods on Thursday but has not visited the affected regions.