Global News Desk:
Russian missiles pounded
Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Odesa on Friday, killing more than a dozen
people including rescue workers in an attack President Volodymyr Zelensky
described as "vile".
AFP journalists on the scene saw
bodies covered by blankets strewn on the street, while images from officials
showed exhausted emergency service workers smeared with blood and dirt dousing
flames and treating wounded colleagues.
Local authorities said Russian
aerial bombardments struck residential buildings, ambulances and a gas
pipeline, leaving at least 20 people dead and wounding another 73 people,
including rescuers.
Maria Slyzovska, who witnessed
the attack, said the first strike rocked her mother's home leaving
"everything broken" before the second missile hit.
"There were a lot of people
there. There was blood and ambulances. We all live in the realities of this
Russian roulette," she told AFP. Zelensky said Russian forces had launched
a type of attack known as a double-tap strike on the port hub, with the second
projectile ploughing into rescue workers at the scene.
City officials said Moscow
targeted Odesa with Iskander missiles launched from the Crimean peninsula,
annexed by Russia in 2014. "Russian terror in Odesa is a sign of weakness
of the enemy, which is fighting Ukrainian civilians at a time when it cannot
guarantee security for people on its own territory," said presidential
aide Andriy Yermak.
Kyiv, Moscow exchange barrages
There was no immediate comment on
the strikes from Russia, whose forces have routinely targeted the transport hub
with drones and missiles. The strikes came on the first day of presidential
elections in Russia, which is also hosting the vote in several occupied regions
of Ukraine, angering Kyiv.
UN Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres as well as more than 50 member states slammed Moscow for holding the
vote in parts of Ukraine, with Guterres saying that the "attempted illegal
annexation" of those regions has "no validity" under
international law, according to spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
Russian deputy UN ambassador
Dmitry Polyanskiy said he would not comment on criticisms regarding "the
domestic affairs of our country." Friday's attack was just the latest in a
series of fatal barrages between Kyiv and Moscow, as polls opened across
Russia.
Kyiv said that a Russian drone
strike killed two people in the central Ukrainian region of Vinnytsia, and that
shelling on the frontline Zaporizhzhia region killed one woman. National police
said that Russia had attacked the Vinnytsia region, more than 400 kilometres
(250 miles) from the frontlines, with drones, leaving a 52-year-old man and his
53-year-old wife dead.
In the southern Zaporizhzhia
region, which Moscow claims to have annexed and partially controls, a
76-year-old woman was killed when fragments of a Russian shell hit her in her
garden, Ukrainian Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
- 'Trying to break through' -
Moscow-installed officials in the
Russian-held city of Donetsk meanwhile said a "barbaric" Ukrainian
attack on a residential area had killed three children.
"Three children died. A girl
born in 2007, a girl born in 2021, and a boy born in 2014," Alexey Kulemzin,
the Russian-appointed mayor of Donetsk, wrote on Telegram.
Russia also said Ukraine launched
drone and artillery attacks on areas closer to the countries' shared border. The
governor of Russia's Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said in a post on
Telegram: "The town of Grayvoron came under Ukrainian army shelling."
"There is a dead man. He is
a member of our territorial self-defence unit," he said. Gladkov later
added another man had been killed and two more injured by shrapnel in shelling
of Belgorod city.
The uptick in attacks on Russia's
border regions come after its forces last month captured the city of Avdiivka,
just a few kilometres north of Donetsk. It said pushing Ukrainian forces back
would help protect residents of areas under its control from shelling.
The head of Ukraine's army said
Friday that Russia had launched a wave of attacks to try to advance further in
the area. "The enemy has concentrated its main efforts and has been trying
to break through ... for several days in a row," Ukrainian
commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said in a statement after visiting front
lines around Avdiivka. (News Source By BSS)