Three dead as storm hits Crimea and Russia's Black Sea coast

Three dead as storm hits Crimea and Russia's Black Sea coast

Fierce storms killed three people on the Russian and Crimean Black Sea coast on Monday, with hundreds evacuated.

State news agency TASS reported that one person had been killed in the resort city of Sochi, another on the Russian-held Crimean peninsula, and a third person onboard a vessel in the Kerch Strait, which separates Crimea from the Russian mainland.

Storms have been raging in the Black Sea since Friday.

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Video published online showed large waves sweeping over the seafront in Sochi, and carrying away cars. In the Crimean town of Yevpatoriya, streets were flooded.

The Russian-installed governors of Crimea and Sevastopol, both of which Moscow seized and unilaterally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, declared states of emergency.

Russia's emergency services ministry said it had evacuated more than 350 people.

And the Energy Ministry said bad weather had left about 1.9 million people without electricity on Monday morning in the southern Russian regions of Dagestan, Krasnodar and Rostov, as well as Crimea and the regions of Ukraine that Russia unilaterally said it had annexed last year.

In the Russian port of Novorossiysk, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium and Russia's Transneft state oil pipeline company announced a halt to loadings due to weather conditions.