2023-08-08 14:57:00
The head of the Donetsk military administration, Pavlo Kirilenko, said seven people were killed and 81 injured, including two children. Photo: AFP.
Ukrainian emergency services continued to search for survivors on Tuesday among the rubble of a residential building hit by a Russian missile attack that caused at least seven dead in the eastern city of Pokrovsk.
The town, of about 60,000 pre-war inhabitants, is located about 40 kilometers from the front line in eastern Ukraine, in the Donetsk province, which is largely controlled by Russia despite a Ukrainian counteroffensive underway since June.
In Russia, the government said the attack, which Ukraine says targeted civilian sites, destroyed a Ukrainian military command center in Pokrovsk.
“We are resuming the removal of the rubble,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klimenko said a day after the bombing.
“We were forced to suspend work overnight due to the high threat of shelling,” he added.
The responsible head of the Donetsk military administration Pavlo Kirilenko noted that seven people died and 81 were injured, including two children.
Kirilenko said that Russia fired two missiles at the town in a span of 40 minuteswhich damaged residential buildings, a hotel, restaurants, shops and administrative buildings.
Rescue workers evacuated survivors trapped in the rubble of the five-story building on Tuesday and loaded the injured into ambulances.
Among the deceased is a senior official of the Donetsk emergency servicessaid Minister Klimenko.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced on Monday that the attack had hit a residential building and shared a video of civilians helping to help the wounded.
The images also showed a second building that appeared heavily damaged by the impact.
Also in the east of the country, Moscow said it had advanced 3 kilometers in three days in the direction of Kupiansk, a city located 150 kilometers north of Pokrovsk and close to the Russian border.
Kupiansk and its surroundings, in the northeastern Kharkov province, were recaptured by Ukrainian troops in a counteroffensive launched in September 2022, but Moscow resumed its assault on the area.
“Over the past three days, Russian soldiers have advanced more than three kilometers in this direction,” the Russian Defense Ministry said, the AFP news agency reported.
He also claimed that he had “improved” his positions along the front line and was continuing to repel Ukrainian counter-attacks.
On Saturday, Russian troops attacked a blood transfusion center in Kruglyakivka, near Kupiansk, with a “guided aerial bomb” that killed two people and wounded four, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Two other people were killed in that town on Monday by an attack with “four guided aerial bombs,” said Oleg Sinegubov, head of Kharkov’s military administration.
In mid-July, Ukraine acknowledged that it was in a “defensive position” in the Kupiansk area against an offensive launched by Russia.
Armed with weapons supplied by the United States and other NATO countries, Ukraine launched a long-planned counter-offensive in June that has, however, made only modest gains against resistance from Russian forces.
On the diplomatic front, Ukraine said Monday it was “satisfied” with a meeting of delegates from 40 countries held in Saudi Arabia over the weekend to discuss a peaceful solution to the conflict.
Russia, which was not invited to this meeting in the city of Jeddah, said that without it, the meeting did not have “the slightest added value.”
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