Deadly Russian shelling has hit the city of Zaporizhia again, the day after the partial destruction by an explosion of the Crimean bridge built by Russia, which divers were to examine on Sunday.
These new bombardments, which killed between 12 and 17 according to the reports, come three days after previous strikes which had killed 17 on this city in southern Ukraine.
“After a nighttime missile attack on Zaporizhia […]17 people died”, according to an initial assessment given by Anatoliy Kourtev, secretary of the city council of the city.
The strikes hit houses and multi-storey apartment buildings, he said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky for his part reported 12 dead and 49 people, including six children, taken to hospital.
” Pure evil “
” Any sense. Absolute evil. Terrorists and savages. From the one who gave this order to the one who executed it. Everyone has a responsibility. Before the law and before the people,” the Ukrainian president wrote on his Telegram account.
This Russian strike “destroyed private residences, where people lived, slept without attacking anyone”, added Mr. Zelensky.
A Ukrainian regional official, Oleksandr Starukh, also reported 12 dead, but said other victims could still be found under the rubble.
The Ukrainian Air Force said four cruise missiles, two missiles fired from fighter jets and other anti-aircraft type missiles were used against the city.
Zaporijjia is in the region of the nuclear power plant of the same name, at the center of a standoff for several months which has required it to be stopped. This site has again lost its external power source due to bombardments and relies on emergency generators, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned on Saturday.
These new strikes come the day after a huge explosion, attributed by Moscow to a truck bomb, on the Crimean bridge, a key and symbolic infrastructure linking Russia to the peninsula annexed in 2014 to the detriment of Ukraine.
Russian divers were to examine the work on Sunday, announced Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khousnulline, with “first results” expected during the day.
Car and rail traffic resumed on Saturday a few hours after the explosion which caused one of the tracks of this bridge built at great expense, inaugurated by Vladimir Putin in 2018, to collapse into the sea.
The Russian Transport Ministry said on Sunday that passenger trains from Crimea to Russia were “running according to the usual plan”.
Ferries have also been set up between mainland Russia and the peninsula.
Russian authorities attributed the explosion, which killed three people on Saturday morning, to a truck bomb owned by a resident of Russia’s Krasnodar region.
Moscow did not immediately blame Ukraine for the attack and Ukrainian officials did not formally claim responsibility.
However, kyiv had repeatedly threatened to hit this bridge symbol of the annexation of Crimea, which is also used to supply Russian troops in Ukraine.
Three dead
CCTV footage shared on social media showed a powerful explosion as several vehicles drove across the bridge, including a truck that Russian authorities suspect was the source of the blast.
On other shots, we can see a convoy of tank cars in flames on the railway part of the bridge, and two spans of one of the two collapsed road lanes.
According to investigators, the attack which occurred on Saturday morning killed three people: the driver of the truck as well as a man and a woman who were driving near the explosion, whose bodies were taken out of the water.
The Russian army, in difficulty on the Kherson front in southern Ukraine, assured Saturday that the supply of its troops was not threatened.
Ukraine has struck several bridges in the Kherson region in recent months to disrupt Russian supplies, as well as military bases in Crimea, attacks for which it did not admit responsibility until months later.
Since early September, Russian forces have been forced to retreat at many points on the front. In particular, they had to withdraw from the Kharkiv region (north-east) and retreat to that of Kherson.
Faced with a galvanized Ukrainian army strong in Western arms supplies, Vladimir Putin decreed at the end of September the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists and the annexation of four Ukrainian regions although Moscow only partially controls them.
A sign of discontent in high places over the conduct of operations, Moscow announced on Saturday that it had appointed a new man at the head of its “special military operation” in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, 55.