Russian Overnight Strikes Kill Four in Ukraine’s Odesa Region

Russian strikes overnight on the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa killed four people, including a teenage girl, and wounded 10 more, the regional governor said on Friday.

Four killed in Russian strikes in Ukraine's Odesa, 4th attack in 5 days - India Today
Russian Overnight Strikes Kill Four in Ukraine’s Odesa Region
Russia has targeted Ukraine’s coastal Odesa region throughout the war, hitting cargo ships and grain silos in what Kyiv says is an attempt to destroy its export capacity.

“The enemy attacked the Odesa region with ballistic missiles. Four people were killed, including a teenager,” the regional governor Oleg Kiper wrote on social media.

He said a two-storey building had been destroyed in the attack and that the victims included a 43-year-old woman, a 22-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl.

“Another woman died in hospital from her injuries,” Kiper said, adding that 10 people had been wounded.

Video from the scene of the attack distributed by first responders showed emergency workers retrieving bodies from the rubble of the destroyed building by lamplight.

Russian forces have stepped up attacks on southern Ukraine recently, including strikes that have damaged civilian vessels at ports in the Odesa region.

Ukraine was one of the largest exporters of grain in the world before Russia’s invasion in February 2022 but repeated attacks on its port and storage facilities have severely curbed its output.

Nine people were killed in Odesa in an attack earlier this week, authorities announced on Friday, updating a previous toll of eight, as part of a string of attacks that the European Union described as a “blatant violation of international law”.

Separately, authorities in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia, said one person had been killed in the Pokrovsk district, where Russian forces are advancing.

And one person was killed and seven wounded in Russian strikes on the eastern region of Kharkiv over the last 24 hours, Ukrainian police said Friday.

Ukraine has also stepped up aerial attacks on military and energy targets in Russian controlled regions.

A large oil terminal on the occupied Crimean peninsula that Kyiv’s forces struck overnight between Sunday and Monday was still on fire five days later at the town of Feodosia, local proxy-Russian authorities said.

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© Agence France-Presse