14 dead as Ukraine, Russia exchange strikes: officials

14 dead as Ukraine, Russia exchange strikes: officials
AFP
KYIV: Ukrainian attacks on Russia killed at least nine people on Sunday, while Russian attacks on Ukraine killed at least five, according to officials in both countries.
The exchange of strikes comes amid signs both Moscow and Kyiv are increasing the scale and intensity of attacks on each other, nearly four-and-a-half years into their grinding war.
Civilian casualties in Ukraine have soared this year, as Russia has ramped up its use of hard-to-intercept long-range missiles, according to UN data.
Kyiv has meanwhile launched waves of retaliatory strikes on Russia, including on energy facilities and retail warehouses, in an effort to pressure Moscow into negotiations on ending its offensive.
Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine killed four people earlier Sunday, including a 13-year-old girl near a playground, the region’s acting governor Alexander Shuvaev said.
“The 13-year-old girl was gravely wounded. Medics who arrived at the scene took all possible measures to save her, but her injuries were not incompatible with life,” he said.
A separate drone attack on Russia’s Saratov region bordering Kazakhstan killed two people, while three were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a car in Russia’s Udmurtia region — more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from the front line, the region’s acting governor Olga Abramova said.
“This act is monstrous in its senselessness. These people were definitely not a military target,” she said.
In Ukraine, Russian strikes killed two people in the eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, and at least one person each in the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to regional authorities.
A separate Russian strike destroyed a postal terminal in the northern Kharkiv region, killing a postal worker, the mail operator Nova Poshta said.
US-led talks on ending Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II have been effectively frozen since February, when the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran.
Both Moscow and Kyiv deny targeting civilians.


Ukrainian drones kill eight in Russia and strike Wildberries warehouse, governors say
REUTERS
Ukrainian drone strikes killed at least eight people ​in Russian regions overnight and on Sunday, hitting targets including a warehouse belonging to Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, regional officials said.
Russia's Defence Ministry said it downed 635 Ukrainian drones during the night.
The acting governor of Russia's border region of Belgorod, Alexander Shuvayev, said a Ukrainian drone struck an area next to a playground, killing one child and injuring two.
Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's commissioner for children's rights, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that the strike was "another inhumane terrorist act" by Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Defence ‌Ministry did not ‌immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ukraine's drones attacked ​a ‌Wildberries ⁠warehouse in ​the Samara ⁠region, around 800 km (500 miles) from Ukraine's most advanced military positions, Samara Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said. Fedorishchev said there were no casualties and that a fire that broke out as a result of the attack was being put out.
Ukrainian forces have been hitting deeper inside Russia as they expand strikes on economic and energy targets, aiming to undermine Russia's ability to wage its more than four-year-old war in Ukraine. They have attacked about a dozen Wildberries sites ⁠since July 18 in an attempt to disrupt the operations ‌of the company, a linchpin of the consumer economy ‌often described as Russia's version of Amazon.
A strike on a ​residential building in the neighbouring Saratov region ‌killed two people in the city of Engels, Governor Roman Busargin said. Civil ‌infrastructure was damaged both in Engels and in the city of Saratov, Busargin said.
Both Saratov city, home to a major oil refinery, and Engels, home to a military airbase, have come under repeated Ukrainian attack in recent years.
Ukraine's military said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces attacked the Saratov refinery ‌and the Engels airbase, sparking fires at both facilities. It said its forces also struck an oil depot in the western ⁠Kaluga region.
Three people ⁠were killed and two injured in a drone attack on the Udmurtia region of Russia, acting governor Olga Abramova said. In the border region of Belgorod, three people were killed and five injured in Ukrainian strikes, the local task force reported.
The governor of Russia's Bashkortostan region, Radiy Khabirov, said air defence units repelled a massive drone attack on industrial facilities. One of the drones was shot down over the industrial area of the regional capital of Ufa and a fire was being put out, Khabirov said.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces struck infrastructure and two vessels with military cargo in the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv, as well as a vessel carrying military supplies in the Black ​Sea.
In the southeastern Ukrainian city of ​Zaporizhzhia, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said Russian-launched glide bombs killed one person and injured 21. (Reporting by Felix Light; Additional reporting by Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Joe Bavier, Kevin Liffey, Alison Williams, Will Dunham ​and Ron Popeski)