BELGOROD: Seven people, including a one-year-old girl, were killed Thursday in a Ukrainian rocket attack on the southern Russian city of Belgorod, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
Eighteen other people, including four children, were hospitalized with injuries, six of them in serious condition, Gladkov said, adding that four people, including two children, had already been released for outpatient treatment. He said the dead child’s name was Valentina.
“We all mourn with the families and friends of the victims,” Gladkov wrote on “Telegram”. “I want to express my sincere condolences, I realize there are no words that can comfort this sadness.”
Later, Gladkov said four more injured, including two children, would be treated in Moscow.
Belgorod is the closest major Russian city to the border with Ukraine, and the city and the surrounding region have been under frequent attack since February 2022, when Russia sent its forces into Ukraine as part of a so-called “special military operation”.
Russian authorities said 25 civilians were killed in the largest of these attacks in late December.
The Russian Ministry of Health said it had sent a team of medical specialists from federal centers to Belgorod.
Also read: Kremlin dismisses US warning about Russian nuclear capability in space
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the Telegram events “an act of terrorism by the Kyiv regime” and said Russia would take the case to the UN Security Council.
Kyiv did not immediately comment on the attacks. Since the start of the war, many thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in Russian attacks.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defense systems shot down 14 Ukrainian missiles over the Belgorod region. Reuters could not independently confirm the report.
The ministry said the attack was carried out by Czech-made “Vampire” missiles, the same type Moscow says was used in the deadly strikes on Belgorod in December.
The governor of neighboring Kursk Oblast, Roman Starovoit, said a shopping mall, outdoor sports facilities and residential areas were hit. “The enemy is deliberately targeting a cluster of civilians,” he said.
Video released by Russian media showed Gladkov arriving at the store, which had nearly all of its windows broken. Other footage showed apartment complexes with broken windows and emergency workers running to help injured people at an outdoor sports complex.
