Missile attack on Odessa kills over 17 people

Odessa, Jul 1: A Russian missile struck a nine-story apartment building near Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa early on Friday, killing at least 17 people and wounding 30, the Ukrainian emergencies ministry said.

 

 

 

The missile struck the building in the town of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi at about 1 a.m. (2200 GMT Thursday), the ministry said in a statement. It also caused a fire in an attached storage building.

 

 

 

Serhiy Bratchuk, the spokesman for the Odesa regional administration, told Ukrainian state television that a rescue operation was underway as some people remained buried under the rubble after a section of the building collapsed. Another missile hit a resort facility, Bratchuk said, wounding several people. Reuters could not independently confirm details of the incident. Earlier on Tuesday, the toll from a Russian missile strike on a shopping mall in the central city of Kremenchuk has risen to 16 dead and 59 wounded, the head of Ukraine's emergency services said. He said the main tasks were "rescue works, debris removal, and elimination of fires" following Monday's strike on the shopping center. The Ukrainian air force said the mall was hit by Kh-22 anti-ship missiles fired by Tu-22 bombers from the region of Kursk in western Russia. "The missile fire on Kremenchuk struck a very busy area which had no link to the hostilities," the city's mayor Vitali Maletsky wrote on Facebook.

 

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Lunin denounced the attack as a "war crime" and a "crime against humanity", saying it was a "cynical act of terror against the civilian population." Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Kyiv's allies to supply more heavy weapons and impose fresh sanctions on Russia.