21 die as Russia targets civilians

RUSSIAN missile attacks on residential areas killed at least 21 people in a Ukrainian town near Odesa early yesterday, authorities said.

The airstrikes pierced the cautious relief expressed a day earlier after Russian forces withdrew from a Black Sea island where they could have staged an assault on the city with Ukraine’s biggest port.

Video of the pre-dawn attack showed the charred remains of buildings in the small town of Serhiivka, about 31 miles south-west of Odesa.

The Ukrainian president’s office said three X-22 missiles fired by Russian bombers struck a block of flats and two campsites. “A terrorist country is killing our people. In response to defeats on the battlefield, they fight civilians,” said Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Large numbers of civilians died in Russian strikes and shelling earlier in the war, including at a hospital, a theatre used as a bomb shelter and a train station.

Until this week, mass casualties involving residents appeared to become more infrequent as Moscow concentrated on capturing eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Asked about yesterday’s strike, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated Moscow’s claim that it was not targeting residential areas during the war.

Ukraine’s security service said 19 people died, including two children. It said another 38, including six children and a pregnant woman, were admitted to hospital.

Most of the victims were in the apartment building, Ukrainian emergency officials said.

The airstrikes followed the withdrawal of Russian forces from Snake Island on Thursday, a move that was expected to potentially ease the threat to nearby Odesa, home to Ukraine’s biggest port.

The island sits along a busy shipping lane.

First responders work at the residential building struck by a Russian missile near the port of Odesa yesterday