Russian airstrike in Odessa, Ukraine, kills 16 people including rescue workers

Friday’s attack was just the latest in a series of deadly attacks between Kiev and Moscow

Odessa:

Ukraine said on Friday that Russian forces attacked the Black Sea port city of Odessa with missiles, killing more than a dozen people including a paramedic and a rescue worker.

AFP journalists at the scene saw bodies covered with blankets lining the streets, while images released by officials showed exhausted emergency services workers covered in blood and mud as they doused the flames and treated injured colleagues.

Russian aerial bombardments hit residential buildings, cars and gas pipelines, killing at least 16 people and injuring 55 others, including rescue workers, local authorities said.

“Russian terror in Odessa is a sign of weakness on the part of an enemy that is fighting against Ukrainian civilians when it cannot guarantee the safety of people on its own territory,” said Andrei Yermak, a senior government official in Kiev.

Yermak was apparently referring to a series of deadly attacks by Ukraine on Russian territory and multiple attempts this week by pro-Kiev militias to gain control of Russia’s border areas.

There was no immediate comment on the attack from Russia, whose military regularly targets transport hubs with drones and missiles.

City officials said Moscow targeted Odessa with Iskander missiles fired from the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

The attack came on the first day of Russia’s presidential election, which is also taking place in several occupied regions of Ukraine, and angered Kiev.

President Volodymyr Zelensky and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis were attacked by missiles in Odessa this month when Russia said it targeted military installations in the city’s port.

Kyiv and Moscow exchange fire

The bombing came just days after a Russian drone struck an apartment building in Odessa, killing more than a dozen people, including five children, in the deadliest attack on civilians in weeks one.

Friday’s attack was just the latest in a series of deadly clashes between Kiev and Moscow as polls begin across Russia.

Kiev said a Russian drone strike killed two people in the Vinnitsa region of central Ukraine, and shelling from the front line in the Zaporozhye region killed a woman.

National police said Russia used drones to strike in the Vinnitsa region, more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the front line.

“During the enemy attack, a 52-year-old man was killed and his 53-year-old wife died in hospital,” the statement said.

Ukrainian Governor Ivan Fedorov said a 76-year-old woman was killed in her garden by a Russian shell fragment in the southern Zaporozhye region, which Moscow claimed it had annexed and partially controlled.

“Trying to break through”

Moscow-appointed officials in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk say a “brutal” Ukrainian attack on a residential complex left three children dead.

Alexey Kulemzin, Russia’s appointed mayor of Donetsk, wrote on Telegram: “Three children died. A girl born in 2007 and a girl born in 2021 , a boy born in 2014.”

Russia also said Ukraine had launched drone and artillery attacks in areas close to the two countries’ shared border.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, posted on Telegram: “The town of Graveron was shelled by Ukrainian troops.”

“One person died. He was a member of our territorial self-defense force,” he said.

Gradkov later added that another man was killed by shrapnel and two others were injured in shelling in the city of Belgorod.

Attacks on Russia’s border areas have increased after Russian troops seized the city of Avdievka, a few kilometers north of Donetsk, last month.

The statement said that pushing back Ukrainian forces would help protect residents in areas under their control from shelling.

Ukraine’s army chief said on Friday that Russia had launched a wave of attacks in an attempt to advance further in the region.

“The enemy concentrated its main forces and tried to break through for several days,” Ukrainian commander-in-chief Alexander Silsky said in a statement after inspecting the front lines around Avdievka.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)