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Russian missile attack on Ukrainian town kills 7, officials say

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Police officers of the White Angels unit help a woman in the Donetsk region of Ukraine evacuate to a safe area, June 28, 2024. On Saturday, Russian forces fired missiles outside Zaporizhzhia, killing seven people, including two children.
Police officers of the White Angels unit help a woman in the Donetsk region of Ukraine evacuate to a safe area, June 28, 2024. On Saturday, Russian forces fired missiles outside Zaporizhzhia, killing seven people, including two children.

Russian forces fired missiles Saturday at the town of Vilniansk, outside the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing seven people, including two children, and injuring 31 others, officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated his appeal to allies to provide Ukraine with more long-range weapons and enhanced air defenses to stop what he said were daily attacks on his country.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said two missiles were fired on Vilniansk, damaging infrastructure, a shop and residential buildings.

Emergency services put the death toll at seven, including two children, with 31 others injured, eight of them children. Firefighters put out blazes in several buildings and completed rescue operations.

"Today the enemy carried out yet another dreadful terrorist act against the civilian population," Zaporizhzhia Regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app.

The attack occurred in "the middle of the day, a non-working day, in the town center, where people were out relaxing, where there were no military targets," Fedorov said.

Zelenskyy posted photos from the site showing a large crater, downed trees and a pair of tarpaulins spread out on the ground of what looked like a park.

"Our cities and communities suffer daily from such Russian strikes. But there are ways to overcome this," Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

"Destroying terrorists where they are. Destroying Russian missile launchers, striking with real long-range capability and increasing the number of modern air defense systems in Ukraine" were ways to defend against such attacks, Zelenskyy said.

Russia's Defense Ministry did not reply to a request for comment on the Vilniansk strikes.

However, the Russian ministry, writing on Telegram, said its missiles had struck a nearby area in the Zaporizhzhia region where it said Ukrainian trains unloaded arms and military equipment, killing soldiers and destroying armored vehicles and missiles.

The post, accompanied by a photo of a strike, identified the site as the village of Ukrainka, less than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from Vilniansk.

Reuters could not independently verify battlefield accounts from either side.

The governor of Donetsk region, farther east, said one person died in two incidents of shelling in the city of Kurakhove. Officials said two people in the Kherson region, partly occupied by Russian forces in the south, were also killed.

Rescue teams also were still working at an apartment building that was badly damaged in a missile strike Friday in the central city of Dnipro. That attack killed one person and injured 13, with several others still missing.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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