A Russian shelling attack on a residential area in Zaporizhzhia, has claimed at least 17 lives, and wounded dozens, officials said on Sunday.
Zeporizhzhia is a region the Kremlin illegally claims to have annexed despite not controlling all of it.
It is a south-eastern city in Ukraine.
The blasts in the city, which remains under Ukrainian control but sits in a region Moscow has claimed as its own, blew out windows in adjacent buildings and left at least one high-rise apartment building partially collapsed.
The overnight attack happened in the aftermath of a devastating explosion on a key bridge linking Russian-occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland, a prestige project of the president, Vladimir Putin.
The blast seriously damaged the 12-mile-long (19km) structure, which serves as an important military supply route.
The Zaporizhzhia strike came as Ukrainians – jubilant over the damage to the Kerch bridge, a hated symbol of Putin’s ambitions – were bracing for a major retaliation by Moscow, which had warned Kyiv against targeting the structure.
The rockets that pounded Zaporizhzhia overnight damaged at least 20 private homes and 50 apartment buildings, city council Secretary Anatoliy Kurtev said. At least 40 people were hospitalized, Kurtev said on Telegram.
The Ukrainian military confirmed the attack, saying there were dozens of casualties.
Residents gathered behind police tape by a building where several floors collapsed from the blast, leaving a smoldering chasm at least 40 feet wide where apartments once stood.
Tetyana Lazun’ko, 73, and her husband, Oleksii, took shelter in the hallway of their top-floor apartment after hearing sirens, warning of an attack.
They were spared the worst of the blast that left them in fear and disbelief.
“There was an explosion. Everything was shaking,” Lazun’ko said. “Everything was flying and I was screaming.”
Shards of glass, entire window and door frames and other debris covered the exterior floors of the apartment where they’d lived since 1974. Lazun’ko wept inconsolably, wondering why their home in an area with no military infrastructure in sight was targeted.
“Why are they bombing us? Why?” she said.
Oleksii, who sat quietly, leaning on a wooden cane, has suffered three strokes, Lazun’ko said. Breaking his silence, he said slowly, “This is international terrorism. You can’t be saved from it.”
In recent weeks, Russia has repeatedly struck Zaporizhzhia, which is the capital of a region of the same name that Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed in violation of international law last week. At least 19 people died in Russian missile strikes on apartment buildings in the city on Thursday.
“Again, Zaporizhzhia. Again, merciless attacks on civilians, targeting residential buildings, in the middle of the night,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a Telegram post.
“Absolute meanness. Absolute evil. … From the one who gave this order, to everyone who carried out this order: they will answer. They must. Before the law and the people,” he added.
While Russia targeted Zaporizhzhia before Saturday’s explosion on the Crimea bridge, the attack was a significant blow to Russia, which annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. No one has claimed responsibility for damaging the bridge.
(AFP, Guardian)