Russian forces hit Kyiv, kill 100 Ukrainian troops in Ovruch
At least six people were killed in an overnight bombing on a shopping center in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, an AFP journalist said Monday.
Six bodies were laid out in front of the “Retroville” shopping mall in the northwest of Kyiv, according to the journalist.
The building had been hit by a powerful blast that pulverized vehicles in its car park and left a crater several meters wide.
A shell exploded outside an apartment block in Kyiv, wounding five people, the mayor said Sunday, the latest bombardment as Russian forces try to encircle the Ukrainian capital.
The ten-storey building in northwestern Sviatoshyn district was badly damaged, with all the windows blown out and scorch marks from a fire that broke out, AFP journalists at the scene said.
Firefighters led an elderly woman and a disorientated man with facial injuries to an ambulance. Two burned-out cars lay in the debris-covered courtyard, which also houses a playground.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that “the enemy’s airstrikes” had wounded five people, two of whom were taken to hospital.
“It was lucky” that there were not more casualties, Sviatlana Vodolaga, a spokeswoman for the state emergency service told AFP, adding that six people were rescued from the block.
A kindergarten was also damaged but was empty at the time.
The boom of shelling and rocket fire could be heard in the distance from the scene, which is only a few kilometres from the frontline commuter town of Irpin.
“My sister was on the balcony when it happened, she was nearly killed,” said Anna, 30, a resident of the block who asked to be identified by her first name.
“Please NATO, close the skies. I hate Putin,” she added referring to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Kyiv has been hit by a series of isolated strikes on apartment blocks over the past week, killing at least seven people in total and leaving one building in flames.
Russia’s advance on Kyiv has largely stalled. Moscow’s forces engage in sporadic fighting to the northwest and east but have barely moved for two weeks.
Russia said Sunday it has again fired its newest Kinzhal hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, destroying a fuel storage site in the country’s south.
The Russian defense ministry also said it killed more than 100 members of Ukrainian special forces and “foreign mercenaries” when it targeted a training center in the town of Ovruch in northern Ukraine with sea-based missiles.
“Kinzhal aviation missile systems with hypersonic ballistic missiles destroyed a large storage site for fuels and lubricants of the Ukrainian armed forces near the settlement of Kostyantynivka in the Mykolaiv region,” the defense ministry said.
The ministry said the base had been used for the main supplies of fuel for Ukrainian armored vehicles in the country’s south.
The Kinzhal (Dagger) hypersonic missiles were fired from airspace over Russian-controlled Crimea, the ministry said, adding that Kalibr cruise missiles launched from the Caspian Sea had also targeted the depot.
On Saturday, Russia said it had used the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles to destroy an underground missile and ammunition storage site in western Ukraine close to the border with NATO member Romania.
The Ukrainian armed forces confirmed to AFP on Saturday that the depot had been targeted but said they had “no information of the type of missile.”
Russian analysts said the use Friday of the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles in Deliatyn, a village in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains, was the first combat use of such weapons in the world.
The Russian defense ministry said that it also used long-range precision weapons against other facilities in Ukraine on Saturday evening and early Sunday.
Russian forces fired the Kalibr missiles from the Black Sea to target a plant in the northern city of Nizhyn used to repair armored vehicles, the ministry said.
Source: Alarabiya News
