Search for survivors after shelling kills 10

At least 10 people including children have been killed by shelling in a Russian-occupied town in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, a local Kremlin-installed official said.

Russian emergency services were shifting through the rubble in opes of saving civilians trapped under the debris of their homes in Tokmak, in a part of southern Ukraine that Moscow has illegally annexed from Kyiv, according to Yevhen Balitsky.

The Tokmak municipal administration said the shelling struck three apartment blocks on Friday evening.

Five people were pulled alive from the rubble, Balitsky said, and a further 13 people were taken to hospital.

A Ukrainian rocket also struck a machine-building plant in Russianoccupied Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, injuring three civilians, according to Vladimir Rogov, a Moscow-based official who helps set

Russian policy in annexed territories. Meanwhile, the UK and the United States have announced that new aluminium, copper and nickel produced by Russia will no longer be traded at the world’s two largest metal exchanges.

The London Metal Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange will now ban Russian exports in an effort to hinder one of the country’s biggest sources of revenue, the Treasury said.

Both exchanges help to set global benchmark prices for the trade of base metals. Any existing stock of Russian metal will be exempt from the measures to avoid destabilising the market.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said last night: “Disabling Putin’s capacity to wage his illegal war in Ukraine is better achieved when we act alongside our allies.”