By Serhii Chalyi
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine, June 29 (Reuters) – Russian attacks on three major Ukrainian cities killed 10 people and wounded dozens on Monday, authorities said, with strikes continuing into the afternoon as the death toll climbed.
A missile attack in the southeastern city of Dnipro killed six people and wounded 29, regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said on Telegram. He said a business, a school, private homes and cars had come under attack.
“Russia launched a missile strike on Dnipro, targeting infrastructure,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on X, adding that rescue operations were underway at the site.
“It is essential that Europe is as active as possible in developing its own anti-ballistic defence – its own systems and missiles,” he said.
Later, in his nightly video address, the president vowed a response to all the strikes. “And we are doing this so that, above all, it will affect the Russian state system and Russia’s ability to drag out the war,” he said.
In Zaporizhzhia, a city further southeast, a Russian drone attack on a minibus killed two men and a woman and injured eight, including a 7-year-old boy, regional officials said.
The regional governor, Ivan Fedorov, posted footage on Telegram of a white minibus, its floor bloodied and back doors damaged, with a body of a man inside.
Reuters Television footage showed a blackened minibus with its back doors blown out and a pool of blood on the floor.
“People are feeling the war more. What else can I say? This is terrorism, nothing else,” Svitlana Komarova, 58, whose husband was killed in the incident, told Reuters.
The driver of a nearby car damaged in the incident, Anatolii Natkin, described the attack as “very serious terror. So many gas stations have already been damaged”.
Fedorov also said seven people, including two children, were injured later when a drone exploded near a bus.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in the northeast, a glide bomb killed a 23-year-old woman and wounded 10, according to officials.
That strike damaged a tram and more than 15 cars, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. Reuters Television footage showed police and forensic experts combing through the site and a body covered in a tarp lying nearby.
Another glide bomb flew in less than an hour later but failed to detonate.
Kharkiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, three large industrial cities, have come under repeated Russian attacks during the war, now in its fifth year.
There was no comment from Russia on the attacks. Its war in Ukraine has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians. Moscow has also accused Ukraine of hitting civilian targets during attacks on Russia or Russian-occupied areas, though on a much smaller scale. Both sides deny targeting civilians.
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka and Max HunderEditing by Gareth Jones, Peter Graff, Ron Popeski and Sanjeev Miglani)
Comments