Kyiv, Jun 14 (EFE).- At least 6 people have died in overnight Russian missile strikes on the port city of Odesa and the Donetsk region, Ukrainian authorities reported on Wednesday.
Russian forces fired Kalibr missiles at several civilian buildings in Odesa overnight causing damage to an area spanning some 1,000 square meters and sparking a blaze that ripped through an area covering around 400 square meters.
“Residential buildings again. Civilian infrastructure objects again: a business center, an educational institution, shops, a church, a restaurant. At night. Insidiously, as always,” Ukraine’s interior affairs minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram.
According to the official, three people died in the strike and 13 others were injured.
The Ukrainian interior ministry has released several photos of firefighters putting out the blaze in a wrecked and scorched warehouse.
Emergency services have now concluded the search and rescue operations in the port, according to Klymenko.
Another three civilians died and three were injured overnight in strikes in the southeastern Donetsk region, authorities reported.
The strikes targeted the towns of Kramatorsk and Kostiantynivka and were launched by Russian forces at 5:00 am on Wednesday, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said on Facebook.
“There are three dead and three wounded – these are the preliminary data on civilian casualties following the morning shelling of Donetsk region,” Kyrylenko added.
The missiles struck “the private sector of the city, causing significant damage: at least 5 were completely destroyed, and two dozen private houses were damaged in Kramatorsk, two were destroyed and 55 were damaged in Kostiantynivka. In addition, a gas pipeline and power grids were damaged,” according to the governor.
Over in central Ukraine, the death toll from a missile strike on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown on Tuesday at dawn climbed to 12.
“Unfortunately, there are already 12 victims – at night, a 67-year-old man died of life-threatening burns,” Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the Kryvyi Rih military administration, said on Telegram.
The city is observing a day of mourning to honor those who died in the attack.
In his late-night address to the nation, Zelenskyy warned that one of the missiles used by Russia in the attack on Kryvyi Rih contained components manufactured in countries allied with Ukraine.
“Russia still has the ability to obtain critical components for missile production from companies around the world, including companies from some partner countries,” the president said.
“These components are then shipped to Russia in various ways. If we take, for example, one of the missiles that hit Kryvyi Rih today, about 50 components in it – mostly microelectronics – were produced in other countries,” Zelenskyy added.
On the front lines, a spokesman for the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, Andriy Kovalyov, reported that its forces had advanced between 200 and 1,400 meters in various sites.
Kovalyov also reported that around three square kilometers of land had been liberated since Zelenskyy on Sunday confirmed that Ukraine’s much-awaited counter-offensive had started.
Kovalyov added that in the Berdyansk direction, fighting continues in areas such as Makarivka, Novodanylivka and Novopokrovka.
Berdiansk, a port on the Ukrainian Sea of Azov in the province of Zaporizhzhia, is currently occupied by Russia.
The Ukrainian defense ministry reported on Monday that its forces had liberated seven towns, including Makarivka, a small town in the Donetsk province some 140 kilometers north of Berdyansk.
According to the ministry, some 90 square kilometers of occupied territory has been liberated during the first week of Ukraine’s counter-attack.
The counter-offensive is currently focused on three sectors of the front located in Donetsk, in Zaporizhzhia and at the intersection of these two provinces.EFE
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