KIEV, Aug 14 (Reuters) – Russian airstrikes killed seven people, including a 22-day-old baby, and injured at least 22 in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine on Sunday, prompting local authorities to to declare Monday a day of mourning and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to pledge justice.
kyiv recaptured part of Kherson from Russian occupation last November, but Kremlin troops continued to shell the regional capital and surrounding areas from across the Dnipro river.
Five people died in the village of Shyroka Balka, including a 22-day-old girl, her 12-year-old brother who died of serious injuries at hospital and their 39-year-old mother, Olesia, Zelenskiy said.
“Terrorists will never voluntarily stop killing civilians,” Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote in a Telegram post. “The terrorists must be stopped. With force. They don’t understand anything else.”
Two people, including a church pastor, were killed in the neighboring town of Stanislav, according to Governor Oleksandr Prokudin.
Three people in the city of Kherson and in the town of Beryslav were injured, according to the Interior Ministry, and casualties were also reported in five other settlements in the region.
“Today the Kherson region was shaken by the terrible news. Kherson, Veletenske, Zolota Balka, Stanislav, Komyshany, Shyroka Balka…” Prokudin wrote on Telegram, listing the settlements affected by Sunday’s attacks.
Later in the evening, the Kherson local government said a fresh airstrike and artillery shelling injured a 31-year-old woman and man and damaged at least 12 houses in the town of Bilozerka. In a Telegram post, he said that three guided aerial bombs had damaged several houses in the village of Odradokamianka.
Zelenskiy said that as of 6 p.m. there were 17 reports of shelling in the Kherson region alone on Sunday, as well as incidents in Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donbas, Kharkiv regions and in the border areas of northeastern Ukraine.
“There is not a day that the Russian evil does not receive our totally fair response,” he said in his late-night video address.
He cited previous Russian targets, including occupiers, equipment, warehouses and the Kerch Bridge linking occupied Crimea with Russia that his national intelligence agency recently acknowledged sabotaging last October, as “evidence that we will not leave any of Russia’s crimes unanswered.” “.
Ukraine’s army launched a counteroffensive in June to recapture Russian-occupied territory in the southeast, but has made no significant attempt to cross the Dnipro to reach the other side of the Kherson region.
Reporting by Dan Peleschuk in kyiv and Elaine Monaghan in Washington Editing by Nick Macfie, Frances Kerry and Chris Reese
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Discover more from PressNewsAgency
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.