Four people were killed on Friday as a result of a missile strike on a five-storey apartment building in the occupied city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, the Russian-installed authorities in Luhansk reported on Telegram.
A further 50 people were injured in the attack, and first pulled seven people out from under the rubble, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations wrote on Telegram.
Russia’s Defence Ministry reported that the Ukrainian army had fired “five US-produced ATACMS missiles” towards the apartment building. The ministry added that four missiles had been intercepted by air defence systems, but that the fifth missile had struck two apartment blocks.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the Ukrainian government, which she referred to as “terrorist scum”, of carrying out the strike, adding that Kyiv was “indiscriminately wiping out civilians”.
“People in EU countries should ask their governments the question: to whom are you supplying such an uncontrolled amount of weapons and money, and what will happen next?” Zakharova said.
Ukraine has not yet commented on the strike.
Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk declared the “Luhansk People’s Republic” (LPR) in 2014 in the early days of the War in Donbas. The internationally unrecognised LPR was formally annexed by Russia in September 2022 following an illegal Russian-administered referendum that was widely condemned by the international community.