Russian rocket attack on apartment kills 15 people in Eastern Ukraine.
According to authorities on Sunday, more than 20 people may still be buried in the wreckage after a Russian missile struck an apartment building in the eastern Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar. At least 15 people were killed in the attack.
The rocket strike on civilian targets on Saturday night is the most recent in a string of recent high-casualty assaults. At least 19 people perished when a Russian missile struck a mall in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, in late June, and 21 people died this month when rockets struck an apartment complex and a leisure area in the southern Odesa region.
Russia has repeatedly repeated that it is solely attacking military targets throughout the conflict. At a Sunday briefing held by the Russian Defense Ministry, there was no mention of Chasiv Yar.
The village of roughly 12,000 people was struck by Uragan rockets, launched from truck-borne weapons, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region that encompasses Chasiv Yar.
Later, the Ukrainian emergency services reported an estimated 20 individuals trapped beneath the rubble and that the death toll had increased to 15. At least three persons buried in the debris had vocal contact with rescuers.
About 12 kilometers to the southeast of Chasiv Yar lies Kramatorsk, which Russian troops are anticipated to strike heavily as they advance west.
In the Donbas area, where separatist insurgents have been engaged in combat with Ukrainian troops since 2014, the Donetsk region is one of the two provinces, along with Luhansk. The last significant center of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk, the city of Lysychansk, was taken over by Russia last week.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk, said that despite reports that Russian troops were pausing operations, they are generating “real hell” in the Donbas.
Following the capture of Lysychansk, several commentators believed it would take Moscow’s forces some time to reorganize and rearm.
Eric is a professional news editor, writer, and blogger for the last 10 years. He is working with NewsGater as an off-beat news editor cum writer.