More than 111,000 people have been evacuated in Kazakhstan since floods began last month, and on Sunday water flooded more than 1,000 more homes, forcing the removal of more than 4,500 people, Kazakhstani media reported.
The Tobol River, a tributary of the Irtysh, rose 23cm (9 inches) in four hours before 6 a.m. (0100 GMT) on Monday, regional authorities said. The water level in the Tobol River rose by 25 cm in the past two hours to 5.32 metres (17.45 feet).
In Kazakhstan, more than 1,000 homes in the city of Petropavlovsk were flooded, authorities said on Sunday, and more than 4,500 people were evacuated.
Northern Kazakhstan is battling the worst flooding on record after a huge snow cover quickly melted amid heavy rains over land that was already waterlogged before winter set in.
A spokesperson in the Kazakh ministry said they were monitoring the situation in the Russian city of Orsk and water levels in the Ural River, which flows through Orsk and Kazakhstan, then into the Caspian Sea. Both countries have been battling the rising waters for more than five days and declared a state of emergency. The Kremlin said the worst of the flooding was still to come in some parts of the Ural and Siberian regions.
Petropavlovsk Plant of Heavy Machine Building supplied rescuers with drones equipped with infrared imagers and an unmanned aerial vehicle for inspection of areas with a high risk of flooding.
