Attack leaves 14 dead in Belgorod, Russia, after Russian bombings over Ukraine

Attacks on the center of the Russian border town of Belgorod left 14 dead, including two children, and another 108 people injured on Saturday, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said. Russia.

The Russian authorities they accused Kyiv to carry out the attack, which occurred a day after Moscow launched an 18-hour aerial bombardment on different points of Ukrainewhich claimed the lives of at least 39 civilians.

Images of burning vehicles and plumes of black smoke over damaged buildings in Belgorod circulated on social media as air raid sirens sounded. A projectile struck near a public ice rink in the heart of the city, which is located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the border with Ukraine and 670 kilometers (415 miles) south of Moscow.

Although this is not the first time attacks have been launched against the city, they have rarely been carried out in broad daylight and have claimed fewer lives. Regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on social media that the consequences had been the worst the city had faced since Moscow It began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago.

He Russian Ministry of Defense said it identified the munitions used in the attack as Czech-made Vampire rockets and Olkha missiles with cluster munition warheads. He did not release further details and The Associated Press could not verify the allegations.

“This crime will not go unpunished“said the ministry in a statement published in social networks.

The Kremlin indicated that the president Vladimir Putin has already been informed about this and Health Minister Mikhail Murashko has been ordered to join a delegation of medical personnel and emergency workers who will travel from Moscow to Belgorod.

Russian diplomats also called a meeting of the United Nations Security Council in relation to the attack. Speaking to Russia’s state news agency, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Britain and the United States were guilty of encouraging Kyiv to carry out what he described as a “terrorist attack”. He also blamed countries European Union who have supplied weapons to Ukraine.

“Silence as a response to this unbridled barbarism on the part of the Nazis of Ukraine and their puppeteers and accomplices of the ‘civilized democracies’ will be akin to complicity in their bloody misdeeds“the ministry said in a statement.

Earlier on Saturday, Moscow officials reported that 32 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the Moscow, Bryansk, Oryol and Kursk regions.

They also noted that cross-border bombings claimed the lives of two people in Russia. One man was killed and four other people were injured after a missile hit a private home in the Belgorod region on Friday night, and a 9-year-old boy was killed in a separate incident in Bryansk province.

Since May, cities in western Russia have suffered regular drone attacks that Russian officials blame Kyiv. The Ukrainian authorities have never acknowledged responsibility for the attacks on Russian territory or on the Crimean peninsula. However, in the past the largest airstrikes against Russia have come after intense offensives on Ukrainian cities.

Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian territory continued on Saturday. According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, 10 Iranian-made Shahed drones were shot down in the Kherson, Khmelnytskyi and Mykolaiv regions.

Local authorities reported that three people had been killed by Russian missiles: A 55-year-old man in the Kherson region, a 43-year-old man in Stepnohirsk, a town in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, and a 32-year-old man in Chernihiv.

Moscow’s forces launched 122 missiles and dozens of drones across Ukraine on Friday in an air offensive described by a Kiev Air Force officer as the largest of the war.

Besides 39 dead, at least 160 people injured and an unknown number of people were buried under rubble as a result of the assault, which caused damage to a maternity hospital, apartment blocks and schools.

Western officials and analysts had warned that, in recent months, Russia had limited its cruise missile attacks in an apparent attempt to accumulate reserves to carry out massive attacks during the winter, with which it would seek to break the morale of the Ukrainians.

On the front, fighting is practically paralyzed by the arrival of winter, after the Ukrainian summer counteroffensive failed to make significant progress along the around 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) of the contact line.

Continued Russian airstrikes have raised concerns among residents of Ukraine.

Poland said Friday that an unidentified object entered its airspace before disappearing from radar, and all signs point to it being a Russian missile.

Speaking to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti on Saturday, the charge d’affaires of Russia In Poland, Andrei Ordash, said that Moscow He will not comment on the case until Warsaw presents the Kremlin with evidence of an airspace violation.

“We will not give explanations until we are presented with concrete evidence because these accusations are unfounded.“, he claimed.