Russia missile attacks kill 20 in Ukraine city
Rescue workers among dead; Zelensky says Russia would receive a ‘fair response’ from Ukrainian forces for what he said was a ‘vile’ strike
Russian missiles pounded Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa on Friday, killing more than a dozen people including rescue workers.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia would receive a “fair response” from Ukrainian forces for what he said was a “vile” strike on a city that has been atacked by Russian drones or missiles almost every day this month.
AFP journalists on the scene saw bodies covered by blankets strewn on the street, while images from officials showed exhausted emergency service workers smeared with blood and dirt dousing flames and treating wounded colleagues.
Local authorities said Russian aerial bombardments struck residential buildings, ambulances and a gas pipeline, leaving at least 20 people dead and wounding another 73 people, including rescuers.
Maria Slyzovska, who witnessed the atack, said the first strike rocked her mother’s home leaving “everything broken” before the second missile hit.
“There were a lot of people there. There was blood and ambulances. We all live in the realities of this Russian roulete,” she said.
Zelensky said Russian forces had launched a type of atack known as a double-tap strike on the port hub, with the second projectile ploughing into rescue workers at the scene.
City officials said Moscow targeted Odesa with Iskander missiles launched from the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.
“Russian terror in Odesa is a sign of weakness of the enemy, which is fighting Ukrainian civilians at a time when it cannot guarantee security for people on its own territory,” said presidential aide Andriy Yermak.
There was no immediate comment on the strikes from Russia, whose forces have routinely targeted the transport hub with drones and missiles.
The strikes came on the first day of presidential elections in Russia, which is also hosting the vote in several occupied regions of Ukraine, angering Kyiv.
This month, Zelensky and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came under missile atacks in Odesa, when Russia said it was targeting military facilities at the city’s port.
That bombardment came just days ater a dozen people -- including five children -- were killed when a Russian drone hit an apartment block in Odesa, in one of the deadliest atacks on civilians in weeks.
Friday’s atack was just the latest in a series of fatal barrages between Kyiv and Moscow, as polls opened across Russia.
Kyiv said that a Russian drone strike killed two people in the central Ukrainian region of Vinnytsia, and that shelling on the frontline Zaporizhzhia region killed one woman.
National police said that Russia had atacked the Vinnytsia region, more than 400 km from the frontlines, with drones, leaving a 52-year-old man and his 53-year-old wife dead.
In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, which Moscow claims to have annexed and partially controls, a 76-year-old woman was killed when fragments of a Russian shell hit her in her garden, Ukrainian Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
Moscow-installed officials in the Russian-held city of Donetsk meanwhile said a “barbaric” Ukrainian atack on a residential area had killed three children.
“Three children died. A girl born in 2007, a girl born in 2021, and a boy born in 2014,” Alexey Ku lemzin,t he russian-appointed mayor of donetsk, wrote on Telegram.
Russia also said Ukraine launched drone and artillery atacks on areas closer to the countries’ shared border.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said in a post on Telegram: “The town of Grayvoron came under Ukrainian army shelling.”
“There is a dead man. He is a member of our territorial self-defence unit,” he said.
Gladkov later added another man had been killed and two more injured by shrapnel in shelling of Belgorod city.
The uptick in atacks on Russia’s border regions come ater its forces last month captured the city of Avdiivka, just a few kilometres north of Donetsk.
It said pushing Ukrainian forces back would help protect residents of areas under its control from shelling. The head of Ukraine’s army said Friday that Russia had launched a wave of atacks to try to advance further in the area.