At least seven people were killed and 70 wounded in a missile attack launched by the Ukrainian armed forces on Monday evening on the town of Nova Kakhovka.
Unverified footage on social media showed smoke followed by a huge fireball that lit up the darkness of the sky. Pictures of rubble scattered in the streets and burnt buildings.
The Russian-appointed administration in the Kherson region it controls in southern Ukraine said that the Ukrainian armed forces carried out the strike with US-supplied HIMARS missiles and destroyed warehouses containing saltpeter (sodium nitrate), a chemical that can be used to make fertilizer or gunpowder. about a huge explosion.
Ukrainian officials said their forces destroyed an ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka. Serhiy Prachuk, a spokesman for the Odessa administration, said on Telegram that Nova Kakhovka has now lost its ammunition depot.
“Seven deaths have already been confirmed,” Vladimir Leontiev, head of the Russian-appointed civilian military administration in Kakhovka, was quoted by the TASS news agency as saying.
“There are still many people under the rubble. The wounded are being taken to hospital, but many people are trapped in their apartments and homes,” he added.
The RIA news agency quoted Kirill Strimosov, deputy head of the Russian administration in Kherson, as saying that the city’s hydroelectric power station was not damaged.
Ukraine said it expected a new offensive from Russian ground forces, following intense and large-scale bombing that killed 30 people.
Thousands have been killed, millions displaced and some Ukrainian cities reduced to deserted ruins since Russia sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 in the biggest ground invasion of Europe since World War Two.
The two sides exchanged accusations of targeting civilians, and each side denied this.
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