38 dead, 9 rescued from shelled apartment building after Russian rocket attack, Ukraine officials say
The death toll from a Russian rocket attack that struck a Donetsk apartment building Saturday rose to 38, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday afternoon. The head of the Donetsk regional military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on social media earlier in the day that nine wounded people were rescued from the building in Chasiv Yar.
Russia, which denies deliberately targeting civilians, said on Monday it had "destroyed the temporary deployment point" of a Ukrainian defense unit in Chasiv Yar, Reuters reported.
Yet many in the Donbas, a fertile industrial region in eastern Ukraine made of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, refuse — or are unable — to flee, despite scores of civilians being killed and wounded each week.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, and its surrounding region, Russian strikes hit residential buildings, killing four civilians and wounding nine, Ukrainian officials said.
"The Russians continue their tactics of intimidating the peaceful population of the Kharkiv region," Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote Tuesday on Telegram.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday that their forces targeted a Russian ammunition depot in southern Ukraine overnight, resulting in a massive explosion captured on social media.
The Ukrainian military's southern command said a rocket strike targeted the depot in Russian-held Nova Kakhovka, about 35 miles east of the Black Sea port city of Kherson, which is also occupied by Russian forces.
The precision of the strike suggested Ukrainian forces used U.S-supplied multiple-launch High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, to hit the area. Ukraine indicated in recent days that it might launch a counteroffensive to reclaim territory in the country's south as Russia devotes resources to capturing all of the eastern Donbas region.
Russia's Tass news agency offered a different account of the blast in Nova Kakhovka, saying a mineral fertilizer storage facility exploded, and that a market, hospital and houses were damaged in the strike. Some of the ingredients in fertilizer can be used for ammunition.
A satellite photo taken Tuesday and analyzed by The Associated Press showed significant damage. A massive crater stood precisely where a large warehouse-like structure once stood in the city.
