At least 17 people were killed and several more were injured after a Russian rocket strike struck apartment complexes and other targets in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia overnight, according to authorities.
Rescuers were seen dragging an elderly lady from the wreckage this morning after the assault reduced one high-rise residential building to rubble and damaged other properties, according to a shocking video shared on social media by Ukrainian authorities.
In an earlier scene, rescuers and desolate locals were seen making their way through piles of twisted metal and shattered bricks in search of survivors and making an effort to recover what little was left of the destruction.
In addition to the high-rise that was destroyed by the explosions, city council secretary Anatoly Kurtev said that at least 20 single-family houses and 50 apartment complexes were also damaged.
The strike was verified by the Ukrainian military, who also said that there were several casualties.
The several attacks followed an explosion on Saturday morning that partially collapsed a bridge connecting the Crimean Peninsula with Russia, crippling a crucial supply route for the Kremlin’s sputtering military operation in southern Ukraine and striking a massive symbol of Russian dominance in the area.
Putin, the president of Russia, had already issued a warning that any assault on the bridges in Crimea would hasten the “day of judgment,” and other Russian officials demanded revenge in the aftermath of the explosions.
In recent weeks, Russia has regularly attacked Zaporizhzhia, which is in the Ukrainian-controlled portion of the area that Putin illegally seized last week.
Russian missile attacks on residential complexes in the southern city, which is just 80 miles from Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, resulted in at least 19 fatalities on Thursday.
“Once again, Zaporizhzhia.” Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said on Telegram that citizens were once again the victim of ruthless strikes that occurred in the middle of the night and targeted residential structures.
Absolute cruelty utterly wicked. Everyone who carried out this order will get an explanation from the person who issued it. They have to. He said, “Before the law and the people.
Behind police tape, residents of a building that had been damaged overnight came to see the smoldering ruins of several stories that had fallen due to the explosion, leaving a crater at least 40 feet wide where apartments had previously been.
Rescuers made an effort to access the top stories.
Even while Russia repeatedly attacked Zaporizhzhia before Saturday’s explosion on the Crimea bridge, many people will undoubtedly see yesterday night’s missile assault as payback since it happened so soon after the damage was done to the peninsula’s emblem of Russian dominance.
The bridge hasn’t been blamed for being damaged yet.
Some Russian lawmakers demanded that Putin use the word “counter-terrorism operation” as opposed to the term “special military operation,” which has diminished the magnitude of the conflict in the eyes of the average Russian.
After the bridge explosion, the Russian Defense Ministry said that General Sergei Surovikin, the head of the air force, would now be in charge of all Russian forces in Ukraine.
Gen. Surovikin, who this summer was given command of the military in southern Ukraine, had previously been in head of the Russian forces in Syria and was suspected of ordering an attack that mostly devastated Aleppo.
The 12-mile Kerch Bridge, which spans a strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is a representation of Moscow’s claims to the peninsula it seized from Ukraine in 2014 and a crucial connection to it.
Although automobile traffic resumed on one of the two connections that remained in place on Saturday afternoon and rail travel progressively started up again yesterday evening, train and vehicle traffic across the bridge was temporarily stopped.
In a video speech yesterday, Zelensky alluded to the bridge assault but did not explicitly address it.
On the area of our state, “today was not a horrible day and largely sunny,” he added.
‘Unfortunately, Crimea was overcast. Nevertheless, it was also warm.
Additionally, he stated that Ukrainian troops made advances or maintained the line in the east and south, but conceded that there had been “very, very severe, very brutal combat” in the area of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces had recently claimed gains.
Since legally absorbing the surrounding area on September 29, Russia has intensified its attacks on the city of Zaporizhzhia.
32 people have died as a result of Russia’s missile attack on a civilian convoy leaving the city on September 30, according to the regional governor of Zaporizhzhia.
Oleksandr Starukh reported that a second victim passed away in a hospital on Friday in a Telegram message.
The biggest nuclear power plant in Europe is located in a territory of Zaporizhzhia that is now governed by Russia.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station has been repeatedly put in danger by fighting, and Ukrainian authorities last month shut down its last working reactor to save a radioactive catastrophe.
The Zaporizhzhia reactor has subsequently lost its final remaining external power supply as a consequence of additional shelling, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, which said on Saturday that the site is now depending on emergency diesel generators.
Russian tourists often visit the Crimean Peninsula, which also has a Russian naval facility there.
50,000 visitors, according to a Russian tourism organization, were in Crimea on Saturday.