Six dead, 73 injured as rocket hits flats in Zelensky’s town | World | News
Six people – including a girl of 10 and her mother – were killed when Russian missiles struck the home town of Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelensky.
At least 73 people were injured, eight of them children, as a rocket tore the front off a nine-storey block of flats in Kryvyi Rih on Monday morning. Rescuers were on Monday night scouring debris for survivors.
Another missile almost destroyed a university building in the city.
Mr Zelensky said: “There are dead and wounded. There may be people under the rubble. My condolences to all those who have lost their loved ones because of Russian terror.”
Ukraine reported heavy fighting in its north-east while the Kremlin’s invaders bombarded Kherson, Sumy and Kharkiv, killing at least three people. Kyiv officials said their troops had made some gains.
Kherson governor Prokudin Oleksandr confirmed that a utilities worker was killed in the strike by a Grad missile system.
Mr Zelensky said the death toll from a weekend Russian strike on a school in the northern town of Sumy rose to two as rescue teams cleared rubble.
His deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said fighting was raging around Kupiansk and Lyman.
She claimed Russia’s president Vladimir Putin was trying to “divert our forces from the Bakhmut area where we have a successful offensive. [Russia has] attacked endlessly this week.
“But our troops resist the attacks and sometimes push them back with heavy losses.”
Bakhmut fell to Russian forces in May after more than 10 months.
Meanwhile, Ukraine said Monday it was confident that it would be able to keep the lights and domestic heating on this winter, following the biggest-ever repair of a country’s power system. Energy minister German Galushchenko said that the infrastructure would meet demand, despite Putin’s attempts to destroy the network.
Mr Galushchenko added that the country was adding power in innovative ways, saying: “I am very confident that…we will be able to reliably ensure supplies during the heating season.”
Power and water supplies to millions of Ukrainians were interrupted frequently by missile and drone strikes after Russia’s invasion in February last year. Mr Zelensky warned at the time: “If consumption increases in the evening, the number of outages may increase.”
Residents in the capital Kyiv lost power for up to 30 hours at a time.
The World Health Organisation has warned that millions might freeze to death in Ukraine this winter if the bombing of its power network continues.