At least five people have been killed after a Russian glide bomb slammed into a residential district in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, officials said on Friday, as Moscow’s forces continue to hammer civilian areas.
The powerful glide bomb damaged some high-rise apartment blocks for the third time since the war began and also wrecked a local market, according to the head of the regional military administration, Ivan Fedorov.
The brute force of glide bombs, a retrofitted Soviet weapon launched by Russian jets flying at high altitude, has for months laid waste to Ukraine’s front-line cities.
Ukraine has no effective countermeasure against them.
A Russian drone assault on the southern city of Odesa also struck a residential area during the night, injuring five people.
The overnight attacks came two days after a Russian drone and missile barrage on Ukraine’s western city of Ternopil killed 31 people, including six children, and injured 94 others.
The entire western Ukraine was hit by a combined strike, which included various types of air assault weaponry, including “X-101 missiles, Kalibr missiles and one ballistic missile,” according to authorities.
Emergency services say 13 people are still unaccounted for after the attack crushed the top floors of apartment blocks and started fires.
Moscow has significantly ramped up its aerial attacks against Ukraine in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and other civilian targets.
In many cities across Ukraine civilians have been forced to cope with over 15 hours per day without electricity, facing increasingly colder weather and the incoming winter.
Additional sources • AP
