At least three civilians have been killed, and dozens of others have been wounded in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown after an overnight Russian missile attack on civilian buildings.
Gov. Serhiy Lysak, who manages the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine, said on Telegram that the strike on a five-story residential building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih engulfed it in fire.
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“Apartments from the first to the fifth floors are on fire. The fire covered 700 square meters. Rescuers are putting it out,” Lysak wrote, adding that civilians were trapped under the rubble of the building, and cars, trucks, and farm buildings were also set ablaze and destroyed.
Rescue operations are ongoing. “Appropriate services are available everywhere. The consequences of this cynical attack are being clarified,” Lysak wrote.
Zelensky took to Telegram to show a video of the destruction, which shows charred vehicles and rescue workers trying to put out the intense flames in the building. “Terrorists will never be forgiven, and they will be held accountable for every missile they launch,” Zelensky added with his expression of condolences.
Kryvyi Rih is about 95 miles north of Kherson, a city infamous since February 2022 due to the devastation seen there. The catastrophic circumstances seen in southern Ukraine were exacerbated when the Nova Kakhovka dam collapsed earlier this month, flooding Kherson and many other areas. Both Ukraine and Russia have accused the other of causing its collapse.
The flooding in southern Ukraine is widespread. At least 230 square miles in the region were flooded as of last Thursday, while floodwaters rose to an average level of 18 feet, Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, said in a statement on Telegram.
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Thousands of people have been forced to abandon their homes as roughly 80 settlements or villages could be affected. Ukrainian leaders have estimated that roughly 40,000 people could be affected, while the environmental impact remains unknown. Zelensky visited the region last week to survey the damage.
The war rages on as Ukraine seeks to take back land Russia captured in the earlier months of the war, primarily in the southern and eastern regions of the Eastern European country. And while early on into Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which is believed to be more about looking for signs of weakness than all-out assaults, Russia appears to be putting up fierce resistance.
