An overnight Russian missile strike killed 17 people in Zaporizhzhia, local authorities said yesterday, in the latest deadly attack to hit the southern Ukrainian city that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called “absolute evil.”
The strike came a day after a key bridge linking Russia with Crimea — seen as a symbol of the Kremlin’s annexation of the peninsula — was partially destroyed by an explosion Moscow blamed on a truck bomb.
“After night missile attack on Zaporizhzhia, at least 20 houses and about 50 multistory buildings were damaged. Seventeen people died, as of now,” Zaporizhzhia City Council Secretary Anatoliy Kurtev wrote on Telegram.
Photo: Reuters
Four educational institutions were also damaged, he added.
Zelenskiy and regional official Oleksandr Starukh provided a lower death toll of 12, with the latter saying that more victims might be under the rubble as a search-and-rescue operation was launched.
At least 17 people including a child died when seven Russian missiles hit Zaporizhzhia before dawn on Thursday, Ukrainian authorities announced in an upwardly revised toll on Saturday.
“Zaporizhzhia again. Merciless strikes on peaceful people again. On residential buildings, just in the middle of the night,” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram of yesterday’s attack, adding that 49 people including six children were in hospital.
“Absolute meanness. Absolute evil. Savages and terrorists. From the one who gave this order to everyone who fulfilled this order. They will bear responsibility. For sure. Before the law and before people,” he said.
On Saturday, traffic resumed over the 19km Kerch Bridge, on a strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, which was struck in blast earlier in the day.
The bridge was hit by a blast around dawn on Saturday, killing three people, setting several oil tankers ablaze and collapsing two car lanes, Russian investigators said.
The explosion drew celebrations from Ukrainians and others on social media, but Zelenskiy made no direct mention of it in his nightly address and officials made no claim of responsibility.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin told reporters that “traffic has been fully restored” on the bridge’s railway, state news agency RIA Novosti reported, without specifying when operations resumed.
Khusnullin had confirmed the resumption is for “both freight and passenger traffic” in an earlier post on Telegram, and said one of the destroyed lanes would be restored “in the near future.”
Local officials had said earlier in the day that the bridge had been reopened to motor traffic with vehicles subject to stringent screening.
Rail operator Grand Service Express said the first trains had left the peninsula for Moscow and St Petersburg.
Dramatic social media footage posted less than 24 hours before Moscow’s statements showed the bridge on fire with parts plunging into the water.
Following the blast, the bodies of an unidentified man and a woman were pulled out of the water.
They were likely passengers in a vehicle driving near the exploded truck, Moscow said.
Authorities had identified the owner of the truck as a resident of Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, saying his home was being searched.
The Kremlin on Saturday also announced the appointment of a new general to lead its Ukraine offensive following a series of battlefield setbacks that triggered unprecedented criticism of its army at home.
Russian General Sergei Surovikin is to take over its forces in Ukraine. He previously led Russia’s forces in southern Ukraine. He has combat experience in the 1990s conflicts in Tajikistan and Chechnya, as well as, more recently, in Syria.
The decision, which — unusually — was made public, comes after growing discontent among the elite over the army’s leadership.
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