A Russian attack on the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhia has killed at least 25 people and injured dozens more, a Ukrainian official announced Friday. They were part of a humanitarian convoy that was going to rescue relatives and acquaintances to territory occupied by the Russians in the province of the same name before Moscow annexes this and three other provinces of Ukraine at 3:00 p.m. today (Russian time).
The regional governor of Zaporizhia, Oleksandr Staruj, reported that in addition to the 25 dead there were at least 50 wounded. "All our civilian compatriots," he said on Telegram. He accompanied the message with images of burned vehicles and bodies lying on the road.
A missile left a crater on the ground next to two lines of cars that were gathering at a parking spot near the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia to transport people and supplies to Russian-controlled territory in the same province, according to the Reuters news agency. They were near a crossing point between the part of the region controlled by the Ukrainians and the part occupied by the Russian army.
The impact of the missile threw chunks of earth into the air and sprayed the vehicles, packed with the occupants' belongings, blankets and suitcases, with shrapnel. The windows of the vehicles, mostly cars and three vans, were blown out. A woman who identified herself as Nataliya said that she and her husband had been visiting her children in the city of Zaporizhia. "We were returning with my mother, who is 90 years old. We have been saved. It is a miracle," she said with her husband.
A representative of the Russian occupation accused the Ukrainian forces of having fired on the vehicles to prevent civilians from reaching the occupied area. Ukrainian forces "beat up our people, who were queuing up," a Russian regional occupation official Vladimir Rogov charged on Telegram, also reporting 23 dead and posting photos of vehicles with broken windows and dead bodies.
The attack comes as Moscow prepares to annex the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizhia in the south, following a referendum widely criticized by Kyiv and its Western allies, as part of its plans to invade Ukraine. , as it did with Crimea, in 2014. Those regions include areas near the city of Zaporizhia, but not the city itself, which remains in Ukrainian hands.
According to the Ukrainian version, the convoy planned to take their acquaintances out to a safe place. "The enemy shelled a civilian humanitarian convoy at the exit of the regional center with missiles. People were lining up to leave for the temporarily occupied territory to pick up their relatives, to bring aid. There are dead and wounded," Staruj wrote. Rescue teams, doctors and the necessary services to attend to the survivors had already gone to the scene of the attack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued decrees early this Friday recognizing the independence of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, steps he already took in February with respect to Luhansk and Donetsk and previously with Crimea. Ukraine has repeated its promises to take back the four provinces, as well as Crimea. For its part, Russia undertakes to defend all its territory, including the provinces to be annexed, even if it does not have absolute control over them, by all available means, including nuclear weapons.
