At least seven people were killed and 70 others wounded in an overnight missile attack by Ukrainian forces on the Russian town of Nova Kakhovka in southern Ukraine's Kherson region, the Russian administration there said on Tuesday.
Unverified images on social media show smoke and sparks over a weapons depot, followed by a huge fireball exploding in the night sky. Other images show debris strewn across the streets and charred buildings.
Russian occupying administration officials said Ukraine struck with US-supplied HIMARS missiles that destroyed warehouses containing saltpeter, a chemical compound that can be used to make fertilizer or gunpowder, causing a huge explosion. Ukrainian officials confirmed that their forces had destroyed an ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka.
"There are already seven dead for sure," the Russian agency TASS quoted Vladimir Leontyev, head of the occupying military and civilian administration of the Kakhovka district. "There are still many people under the rubble. The injured are being taken to hospital, but many people are trapped in their apartments and houses," he added.
The city’s hydroelectric power plant suffered no damage, Russian news agency RIA reported citing Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-controlled administration in Jerson.
The attack in the occupied Jershon region forms part of the counteroffensive the Ukrainian army has launched in the south of the country. The Ukrainian Government had announced on several occasions that it would seek to reclaim Russian-occupied territories such as Jershon and had appealed to civilians to abandon the region to avoid being used as human shields by the invaders.
Separately, at least 12 people were wounded in Russian shelling in the town of Mykolaiv, held by Ukrainian forces and on the southern front, overnight, the regional governor said. Rockets from multiple rocket launchers fell on two medical facilities and residential buildings, Vitaly Kim said.
Russian troops, according to the Ukrainian source, maintain artillery and mortar shelling tactics, launching air and missile strikes on the rear positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and settlements along the contact line.
Since Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24 in the biggest ground invasion of Europe since World War II, thousands have died, millions have been displaced and entire swaths of some Ukrainian cities have been turned into wastelands by bombing. Both sides have accused each other of targeting civilians.
President Valdimir Putin warned the West last week that "nothing serious" had even begun on Ukraine, challenging the United States and its allies to try to defeat Russia and warning that sanctions would trigger a catastrophic spike in energy prices. .
