MOSCOW, July 7: Torrential rains dropped nearly a foot of water in the Black Sea region of southern Russia overnight, unleashing intense flooding that killed 99 people and forced many to scramble out of their beds for refuge in trees and on roofs, officials said on Saturday.

Many people were asleep when the flooding struck the Krasnodar region, and the water rushed into the area around the hard-hit town of Krimsk with such speed and volume that rumours emerged that local officials had opened a nearby water reservoir.

Muddy water coursed through streets and homes, in some cases high enough to flow over the hoods of cars and even as high as rooftops, according to witnesses.

People waded through waist-high water or manoeuvred the streets in boats on Saturday. About 5,000 houses were flooded, the Krasnodar governor was quoted as telling the Interfax news agency. “Nobody remembers such a flood in (the area’s) history,” Alexander Tkachev said.

Anatoly Lastovetskt of the interior ministry gave the death toll as 99, and a regional ministry spokesman said earlier that at least 67 of the deaths were around Krimsk, about 1,200km south of Moscow. Five people died of electrical shock in the Black Sea coastal city of Gelendzhik after a transformer fell into the water, state news agency RIA Novosti said.

Anna Kovalevskaya, whose parents live in the flooded area, described water inundating their home up to the roof.  “In the town people are saying that a reservoir in the mountains above was opened,” she told the Moscow-based radio station Russian News Service. “A wave came from there. There was seven meters of water in the town.”

There was no immediate official comment on the reservoir speculation. Ecologist Igor Chestin, director of the Russian office of the World Wildlife Fund, acknowledged the rumours, but told the Interfax news agency that “we don’t have such information.”

State news channel Rossiya24 showed video of area residents rescuing people in small, inflatable boats and others slogging glumly through flooded homes.

“It came so fast!” exclaimed one woman, waving an arm in frustration at the shin-deep water in her living room.—AP