Russian forces continued to shell eastern Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least 15 people in a strike that ripped open an apartment building in Chassiv Iar, according to Ukrainian authorities.
The strike occurred at night in this small town of some 12,000 inhabitants. According to the rescue services, 24 people are still under the rubble, including a child, while 5 others have been pulled out from under the rubble.
The four-story building was hit by a Russian Hurricane missile, Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region, which the Russian army aims to conquer, said on Telegram.
AFP journalists who arrived on the spot after the strike saw the partially collapsed building, rescuers and a backhoe working to clear the area.
“I was in the bedroom, I came out and everything started shaking, falling apart. What saved me was the wave of the explosion which propelled me, bloody, into the toilets, ”testified a resident interviewed by AFP, refusing to give her name.
According to Kyrylenko, at least 591 civilians have been killed and 1,548 others injured so far in the Donetsk region since the Russian invasion began on February 24. On Friday, he said Moscow was preparing “new actions” in the east.
The Russian army, which announced in early July that it had taken control of the Luhansk region, is now targeting Donetsk to occupy the entire Donbass mining basin.
What saved me was the wave of the explosion that propelled me, bleeding, into the toilet
It has been partially controlled since 2014 by separatists backed by Moscow after the Russian annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula.
“The brutal Russian artillery strikes do not stop for a day, Sloviansk, Bakhmout, Avdiivka…”, condemned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday evening, still calling for “modern and powerful” weapons to defend themselves.
“Civilian objectives”
Mr. Zelensky also accused Moscow of hitting “deliberately, intentionally, simple houses, civilian objects, people. There are victims, dead, injured.
Several Ukrainian officials have also accused the Russian forces of setting fires in the fields with their fire to destroy the crops.
The staff of the Ukrainian army reported Saturday, as the day before, many Russian bombardments, but almost no ground assaults by Moscow forces.
kyiv, for its part, assured that it had targeted two “command points” and Russian depots in the Chornobaivka region (South).
In Kharkiv (north-east), the country’s second city, Governor Oleg Synegoubov reported on Telegram new missile fire which hit an “educational establishment” and a house and left one injured.
Other Russian strikes are reported, notably near Siversk and Sloviansk (east) as well as in the Mykolaiv region (south).
The “ambassador” in Moscow of the separatist republic of Luhansk, Rodion Mirochnik, said on Telegram on Sunday morning that in the Donetsk region an offensive was “launched against Siversk from the north” and the locality of Grygorivka was “captured after fighting”.
According to him, “our troops continue to carry out military operations to liberate Serebrianka”, another locality in the region.
The Russian Ministry of Defense accused in a statement on Saturday evening the Ukrainians of installing men and armaments in schools and civilian buildings in several localities of the territory of Donetsk and Kharkiv.