Search abandoned for victims of flats horror

DNIPRO: Rescuers have called off the search for more victims of the Russian missile strike on a block of flats in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, with 20 people still missing and funerals being held in the griefstricken community.

After the carnage which killed 45 residents of the flats, Ukrainians pressed ahead with talks to obtain more Western weapons as Ukraine army chief Valery Zaluzhny met with chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley in Poland.

Six children were among the victims, including an 11month-old baby.

The toll made Saturday’s attack one of the deadliest since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine last February.

High profile Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych has resigned after he sparked fury by saying the Russian missile had been deflected on to the flats by Ukraine’s air defences.

Arestovych said in an interview hours after the attackthe missile had been “shot down and fell on the entranceway (to the flats). It exploded where it fell.”

His allegation was seized on by Kremlin propaganda as “evidence” that Russia does not target civilians.

The Kremlin has denied responsibility for the strike that also injured 79 people.

The Ukrainian air force said it did not have the ability to shoot down Kh-22 missiles.

Borys Filatov, the mayor of Dnipro, demanded the SBU intelligence agency investigate Arestovych. “I swear before God that the missile strike was direct,” he wrote on Telegram. MPs also had called for his dismissal.

Arestovych said he had been voicing a preliminary theory, but admitted he had made a “serious mistake” and would step down.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his pledge that everyone who “caused this terror” would be found and held to account.

Emergency services said the search and rescue operations at the site were completed on Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, fighting was continuing across the frontline, with heavy shelling in the eastern town of Bakhmut.

Even as the booms of shelling echoed down Bakhmut’s streets, volunteers were busy providing food and shelter to the roughly 8,000 people still living in the city, many without electricity or gas but defying calls to evacuate.

Nearby, uncertainty still surrounded the fate of the war-scarred town of Soledar that Russia claims to have seized.