KYIV: The death toll from a Russian bombing of an aid distribution point in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhia region on Monday has risen to 42, police said on Thursday, making it one of the deadliest strikes on civilians this year.
Zaporizhzhia police said on the Telegram messaging app that up to 33 people remained buried beneath the rubble in the village of Komyshuvakha, and that rescue work and efforts to identify the bodies were continuing. On Wednesday, Ivan Fedorov, co-head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Defence Council, had said 59 people were missing.
Bodycam footage from one of the police officers killed, which Reuters verified, showed the moments before a second Russian strike hit, destroying a shelter where residents were hiding after a radio warning. Ukraine's national police said the strikes included a 3-tonne FAB glide bomb, a weapon that defence intelligence websites say carries around 1.4 tonnes of explosives.
Russia's Defence Ministry said the attack targeted Ukrainian military units around Komyshuvakha and two other settlements, and that up to 25 Ukrainian servicemen were killed. Moscow and Kyiv both deny deliberately targeting civilians.
Seven people were killed in Russian-controlled Ukraine's Luhansk region after two separate attacks on buses, Russian-installed governor Leonid Pasechnik said on MAX messenger on Thursday. Fourteen people were injured, including two boys, aged 15 and 17, he added.
Meanwhile, Ryazan oil refinery, one of Russia's largest refining plants, appears to have come under attack, according to a Reuters analysis of video footage posted on social media on Thursday. The footage appears to show a fire in the direction of the industrial area where the refinery is located.
A Reuters analysis geolocated the video by matching landmarks, including a church, road layouts and surrounding buildings with archive and satellite imagery, although Reuters could not independently verify when the footage was recorded.
Earlier on Thursday, the regional governor said power had been restored in the city of Ryazan and that fires at unspecified industrial sites had been contained or extinguished following a massive drone attack. Before that, the governor had said one person was injured and that falling drone debris had sparked fires at industrial facilities in the region. More than 200 drones had attacked the region, he added.
Ryazan, more than 200 km southeast of Moscow, is home to a major oil refinery and other industrial assets. The extent of any damage to the refinery was not immediately clear. The Ryazan refinery, which supplies fuel to Moscow, has been targeted several times this year and has a processing capacity of 340,000 barrels per day. — Reuters
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