TWO children have been killed in a Russian missile strike on an apartment block in Ukraine – just days after Putin’s troops obliterated a shopping mall.
At least 19 people died and another 38 – including six children and a pregnant woman – have been left injured after the bombings in the small town of Serhiivka, near Odesa.
Bodies of people killed by the Russian missile strike in front of an apartment building[/caption]
The Ukrainian president’s office said three X-22 missiles fired by Russian bombers wiped out an apartment building and two holiday campsites.
Most of the victims were in the nine-storey apartment building, Ukrainian officials said.
Shocking footage of the pre-dawn attack showed the charred remains of buildings in the town as rescuers desperately searched through the rubble for survivors.
The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said 75 people and 19 units were involved in the rescue operation.
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Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said: “A terrorist country is killing our people. In response to defeats on the battlefield, they fight civilians.”
Large numbers of civilians died in Russian shelling earlier in the war, including at a hospital, a theatre used as a bomb shelter and a train station.
Until this week, mass casualties involving civilians appeared to slow down as Moscow concentrated on capturing eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Asked about Russia’s latest atrocity near Odesa, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow wasn’t targeting residential areas during the war and denied responsibility for the strikes.
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He claimed the Russian military is trying to strike munitions depots, weapon repair factories and troop training facilities.
“I would like to remind you of the president’s words that the Russian armed forces do not work with civilian targets,” he said.
The airstrikes followed the withdrawal of Russian forces from Snake Island on Thursday – a move that was expected to ease the threat to nearby Odesa, home to Ukraine’s biggest port.
Russia took control of it in the early days of the war in the apparent hope of using it as a staging ground for an assault on Odesa.
The Kremlin portrayed the departure of Russian troops from Snake Island was as a goodwill gesture to help get shipments of grain and other agricultural products on the move.
Ukraine’s military claimed a barrage of its artillery and missiles forced the Russians to flee in two small speedboats.
In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces have kept up their push to fight the last Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk.
Luhansk Govenor Serhiy Haidai said the Russians are trying to encircle the city of Lysychansk and fighting for control over an oil refinery on the city’s edge.
Haidai said: “The shelling of the city is very intensive.
“The occupiers are destroying one house after another with heavy artillery and other weapons.
“Residents of Lysychansk are hiding in basements almost round the clock.”
Ukraine’s presidential office said a barrage of Russian strikes in the last 24 hours has also killed civilians in eastern Ukraine – four in the northeastern Kharkiv region and another four in Donetsk province.
It comes just days after terrified families cowered in fear and fled as Putin blasted the Amstor mall in Kremenchug.
Two rockets slammed into the crowded mall – leaving many civilians trapped inside and scores injured.
The atrocity was condemned as a “crime against humanity”.
Horrifying videos show the entire Amstor shopping centre in flames as firefighters battle the inferno.
PM Boris Johnson hit out at Putin’s “cruelty and barbarism” following the attack, which left at least 19 people dead and more than 60 injured.
President Zelensky there were at least 1,000 people inside at the time of the assault.
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Putin denied Russian forces targeted the shopping mall.
He claimed the target in Kremenchuk was a nearby weapons depot and that the Russian military does not fire on buildings occupied by civilians.
