AAt least five people were killed and seven others injured in a Russian strike that hit a bus stop in the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, the regional governor announced on Friday July 29. “They bombed […] next to a public transport stop. Twelve people are on the ground,” Vitaly Kim said on Telegram.
First evoking four dead, he then indicated that the toll amounted to five killed and seven injured. He accused the Russian forces of “bombarding the city during the day, when everyone is going about their business”.
Clashes continue
At least eight people have been killed and 19 others injured in the past 24 hours in the eastern Donetsk region, the Ukrainian presidency said in its morning report. In that of Kharkiv, in the Northeast, at least one person was killed and seven others were injured, according to the same source. The governor of the Lugansk region, Sergiï Gaïdaï, for his part announced that the Ukrainian forces had faced six Russian assaults in the East “Enemy reconnaissance groups are trying to find weak points in our defense. […] They attack from different sides and have used the air force several times,” he said on Telegram.
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The Ukrainian army, for its part, destroyed a station in Brylivka, a village located 45 kilometers southeast of the occupied region of Kherson in the south of the country, in order to complicate supplies for the Russian army, said on Facebook the local deputy Serguiï Khlan.
A prison targeted
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister on Friday accused Russia of being behind a strike in pro-Russian separatist territory that hit a prison holding prisoners of war.
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“Russia committed another terrifying war crime by bombing a correctional facility in the occupied Olenivka region where it was holding Ukrainian prisoners of war,” Dmytro Kouleba said on Twitter. “The Armed Forces of Ukraine, which fully adheres to the principles and norms of international humanitarian law, have never and do not carry out bombings of civilian infrastructure, especially in places where prisoners of war are likely to be detained,” the army said in a statement.
Moscow and the separatists, who mentioned at least 40 deaths in this strike, accused the Ukrainian army of being behind the shooting. The Russian Ministry of Defense had said in a press release that shots from a Himars artillery system, supplied to Ukraine by the United States, had hit the prison of Olenivka (Elenovka in Russian) at around 30 kilometers southwest of Donetsk, the capital of the separatists in the eponymous region.