War in Ukraine | Death toll from Russian strike on Zaporizhia rises to eight

(Kyiv) A Russian strike carried out Tuesday on Zaporizhia, a large city in southern Ukraine, left eight dead and 22 injured, according to a new report provided Wednesday by emergency services, while other people could be under attack. rubble.

The strike, which destroyed a clinic and an office building in the city center, is the latest in a series of attacks that have intensified in southern Ukraine, reinforcing fears of a new Russian offensive in the region.

“The body of another dead person was extracted from the rubble” bringing the death toll in this attack to eight, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service (DSNS) said on Telegram.

Twenty-two people were also injured, including a child, added the same source. It is a five-year-old girl, the Interior Ministry said earlier in the morning, according to which “up to five people could be trapped under the rubble”.

Tuesday evening, the DSNS indicated that it was able to “rescue two women” who had spent “more than seven hours under the rubble” in temperatures close to zero.

The survivors telephoned the DSNS and explained where they were precisely, thus allowing rescue operations to be accelerated, according to the same source.

The governor of the Zaporizhia region, Ivan Fedorov, indicated that “20 residential buildings and three non-residential buildings were damaged”.

More than 160 rescuers are working on site to clear the rubble, added Mr. Fedorov. He accompanied his message with a photograph showing mechanical excavators and firefighters working near ruined buildings.

Zaporizhia is one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow has claimed to annex in 2022, without fully controlling it.

Ukrainian experts and soldiers believe that the Russian army could prepare a new ground offensive on the Southern front, where positions have remained generally unchanged for months.

Such an attack would constitute a challenge for the Ukrainian army, already struggling on the Eastern Front and which is engaged in the Russian border region of Kursk, of which it occupies a small part.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who condemned “a brutal attack” on Tuesday, urged the West to provide more air defense systems to Ukraine, including American Patriot batteries.

“Ten to twelve additional Patriot systems” will allow Ukraine to “fully protect its skies,” he said.

A Russian attack had already left 10 dead in Zaporizhia last Friday.

Ukraine says it struck Russian oil site

The Ukrainian army said on Wednesday that it had struck an oil terminal in the Russian border region of Bryansk overnight, which Kyiv said had been used by Russian forces in their war against Ukraine for almost three years.

Russian authorities, for their part, reported a Ukrainian drone attack in Bryansk and another missile attack in Taganrog, a town in the Rostov region, also bordering Ukraine.

“Defense forces struck an oil site of the Russian occupiers” in the Bryansk region causing “a massive fire,” the Ukrainian army general staff said in a statement.

The Bryansk terminal is part of the Druzhba oil pipeline, a strategic axis for transporting Russian oil to several European countries, and it is “actively used to supply the Russian occupation army,” Ukrainian defense assured .

Without mentioning the terminal, the Russian governor of this region Alexandre Bogomaz reported a “fire at an industrial site” in the city of Bryansk following a “drone attack”, in a press release on Telegram, while claiming that the fire had been extinguished.

He claimed that Russian air defenses shot down ten drones over the Bryansk region.

Russian Telegram channels have published videos purporting to be those of a large fire which broke out at this oil site after a drone attack.

The city of “Taganrog suffered a missile attack last night,” said the governor of the Rostov region, Yuri Slioussar.

“An industrial company was damaged and 14 cars burned in a parking lot,” he added. “No one was hurt.”

The city’s mayor reported a heating cut in around thirty residential buildings.

According to some Russian media, the attack probably targeted an aviation factory in Taganrog.

Ukraine has not commented on the attack on the city of Taganrog.

In response to Russian bombings on its infrastructure and cities, Ukraine has increased attacks against Russian energy sites in order to disrupt the logistics of Moscow’s army which still occupies nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory.