The death toll in a residential building hit by a missile in Dnipro, Ukraine, rose from 36 to 40, including three children, with 46 people missing and 75 injured, the State Emergency Service said on Monday.
The attack this Saturday, attributed to Russian forces, who deny their responsibility, is one of the most serious with civilians since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, on February 24 of last year.
In the latest balance, released by sources from the State Emergency Service, 39 people, including six minors, were rescued in search operations, another 98 received psychological support, when the municipal services of the southeastern Ukrainian city had already removed eight thousand tons of rubble. and 41 damaged vehicles.
Local authorities declared three days of mourning after the attack which, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, destroyed 72 apartments and damaged more than 230 in a building inhabited by about 1,100 people.
The Ukrainian president considered, this Sunday, that the attack was carried out by Russian forces from the Kursk region, a few hundred kilometers from Dnipro, although Russia denied the bombing of the residential building, attributing the blame to Ukraine’s air defense.
“The Russian armed forces do not attack residential buildings or social infrastructure facilities, only camouflaged or obvious military targets,” Kremlin (Presidency) spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by the official TASS news agency.
Peskov invoked the “conclusions of some representatives of the Ukrainian side” to insist that the “tragedy was the result of a shell from the Ukrainian air defense system.”
That possibility was suggested by Ukrainian presidential adviser Aleksey Arestovich on Saturday night, while noting that Russia’s culpability was unequivocal.
“Everyone perfectly understands that if there had not been a Russian attack, such a tragedy would not have occurred, regardless of the mechanism of the attack,” Arestovich said at the time, quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE.
For the European Union (EU) what happened in the city of Dnipro was a “war crime” perpetrated by Russian forces.
“Intentional attacks against civilians are war crimes and those responsible must be punished, whatever the cost,” said the Prime Minister of Sweden, Ulf Kristersson, the country that holds the biannual presidency of the EU Council.
Sweden and the EU “strongly condemn Russia’s systematic and ongoing attacks against civilians, civilian property and essential infrastructure in Ukraine,” the Swedish leader added, including “the launch of a missile at a building on Saturday in Dnipro.”
In Brussels, the spokesman for the European Commission on Foreign Affairs, Peter Stano, also denounced the Russian “heinous attack” as a “war crime”, reiterating the call on Moscow to “stop these acts immediately”.
The military offensive launched on February 24, 2022 by Russia in Ukraine has so far caused the flight of more than 14 million people -6.5 million internally displaced persons and more than 7.9 million to European countries-, according to the The latest data from the UN, which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since the Second World War (1939-1945).
Right now, 17.7 million Ukrainians need humanitarian aid and 9.3 million need food aid and shelter.
The Russian invasion – justified by Russian President Vladimir Putin as the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russia’s security – was condemned by the wider international community, which has responded by sending arms to Ukraine and imposing them on Russia in political and economic sanctions.
The UN presented as confirmed since the beginning of the war 6,952 dead civilians and 11,144 wounded, stressing that these figures are far below the real ones.
Source: TSF
