Russia evacuates around 2,000 people from flood-hit Orsk

Russia has evacuated around 2,000 people from their homes in the Russian city of Orsk, a day after rising waters in the Ural River flooded riverside villages and caused a dam to burst.

Russian officials said on Saturday.

The TASS news agency reported that the regional government had evacuated the people from the city of 230,000 near Russia's border with Kazakhstan after thousands of homes were flooded.

Video footage published by the emergency services ministry showed residents being helped into lifeboats wearing life jackets.

On Friday, local authorities in the Ural mountains' Orenburg region, where Orsk is located, urged residents of riverside communities to evacuate after the dam burst.

Agencies cited the local prosecutor's office saying the dam had been breached due to poor maintenance.

In recent days, a string of Russian Siberian and Urals mountain provinces and neighbouring parts of Kazakhstan have been inundated by floodwaters.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the flooding may be Kazakhstan's largest natural disaster in terms of scale and impact for 80 years.

"We must learn all the lessons from these large-scale floods," he said.