By Cassandra Vinograd
A Russian airstrike killed at least four people and wounded more than a dozen others in a frontline town in the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine over the weekend, Ukrainian officials said Monday.
The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general said the strike had hit a “civilian infrastructure facility” on Sunday afternoon in the town of Orikhiv. It said that in addition to the four dead, 13 people were wounded. The prosecutor’s office did not provide further details.
Yuri Malashko, the head of the regional military administration, said a guided bomb had hit a residential area where humanitarian aid was being distributed, killing three women and a man — all in their 40s. Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said that several people had been pulled from the rubble of a building that was “almost completely destroyed,” and that rescue efforts were continuing Monday. Those details could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian forces have for more than a month been waging a counteroffensive in the south and east of the country to recapture territory occupied by Russia. Some of the heaviest fighting of the campaign has been reported near Orikhiv.
Analysts have long anticipated a major Ukrainian thrust in the area, pushing southward toward the city of Melitopol and the Sea of Azov, in an attempt to cut in two the land that Russia has seized.
Malashko said the deadly strike on Orikhiv was one of 36 Russian attacks on Sunday alone in the Zaporizhzhia region.