Ukraine war: At least 16 civilians killed as Russia steps up onslaught on cities
Chuhuiv in north east and Nikopol in the south suffer deadly attacks
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Your support makes all the difference.At least 16 civilians have been killed after Russia launched attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities across the country.
Urban areas were hit by Russian strikes on Saturday, leaving a trail of destruction behind.
This included Chuhuiv, a city in the northeastern Kharkiv region. Local officials said three people – including a 70-year-old woman – were killed in a pre-dawn rocket strike.
The deputy head of Kharkiv’s regional police force said the rockets had partly destroyed a two-storey apartment block, a school and administrative buildings.
Locals were seen searching through the rubble for documents, while other images showed a huge crater in the ground outside the damaged school.
Further south, two bodies were pulled from rubble after rockets fell on the city of Nikopol on the Dnipro River on Saturday.
Images showed a hole blown through the top of a building and firefighters clearing masses of rubble following the strike.
They were the latest in a series of bombardments that Kyiv says have killed dozens of people in recent days.
In the embattled eastern Donetsk region, seven civilians were killed and 14 wounded in the last 24 hours in attacks on cities, its governor said on Saturday.
On the same day, Russia’s defence ministry revealed it had ordered military units to step up their operations to prevent strikes on eastern Ukraine and other territories under its control.
Russia’s military campaign has been focusing on the Donbas, which includes the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, in southeastern Ukraine.
But its forces have been attacking other parts of the country in a relentless push to wrestle territory from Ukraine and crush the morale of its leaders, troops and civilians.
The strike on Nikipol came just hours after Russian shelling hit the city of Dnipro, also in the Dnipropetrovsk region. At least three are believed to have been killed in this attack.
Over in the Sumy region, officials said one civilian was killed and at least seven more were injured after Russians opened mortar and artillery fire on three towns and villages not far from the Russian border.
On Thursday, Kalibr cruise missiles launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea hit an office building in Vinnytsia, a city southwest of Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials said this strike killed at least 23 people, with president Volodymyr Zelensky calling it an “open act of terror”.
It was the deadliest strike out of those bombarding cities over the past few days.
Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilian areas, despite mounting evidence that its missiles have hit residential areas across the country.
The United Nations estimates thousands of civilians have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February.
Additional reporting by agencies
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