At least 30 Ukrainians were killed on Friday in a Russian missile attack on a convoy of civilian vehicles carrying people from Russian-held territory.
The attack took place on the outskirts of the Ukrainian-occupied city of Zaporizhzhya in the southern province of the same name. These four provinces were reportedly taken over by Russia on Friday.
Ukraine’s national police chief Ihor Klymenko said in a statement that an 11-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy were also among the dead.
A total of 88 people, including a 3-year-old girl, were injured in this missile attack.
Kyrlo Tymoshenko, deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, said four Russian S-300 missiles struck the area of the convoy, leaving a crater several feet deep.
A convoy of cars was gathering at a parking lot to try to get into Russian-occupied territory. A checkpoint in the area has opened in recent days, allowing civilians to proceed.
The impact of the missile attack threw bits of dirt into the air and shrapnel into cars full of luggage, blankets and suitcases.
Plastic sheets were wrapped over the bodies of the woman and the youth in the green car. A dead cat was lying next to the young man in the back seat.
In front of the other car lay two bodies in a white minivan, its windows blown out and shrapnel on the side. The body of an elderly woman was lying in a pool of blood next to her shopping bag.
A woman who gave her name as Natalia said that she and her husband had gone to Zaporizhzhya to visit their children and were preparing to return to the Russian-occupied territory.
“We were returning to our mother, who is 90 years old. We are saved. It is a miracle,” she said, standing with her husband near their car.
Zelensky condemned the Russian attack in Zaporizhzhya, as well as the recent attacks in Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk, calling it the work of a “terrorist state”.
Zelensky posted on his Telegram channel on Friday that only “terrorists” would target civilians and accused Russia of seeking revenge for its “firmness” against Ukraine and for its battlefield failures.
He added that “enemy” Russia “destroys peaceful Ukrainians because it lost everything human long ago” and warned that the country would “answer for every Ukrainian life lost.”
Pro-Russian officials said without evidence that Ukraine was to blame for the attack in Zaporizhzhya.
Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that its military targets civilians, despite countless confirmed incidents documented by the United Nations and other international organizations.
post with wires