A Ukrainian rocket fired at a Russian-occupied city hit a bakery and killed at least 28 people, including nine women and a child, over the weekend, Moscow officials said.
Russian-backed leaders in the occupied Luhansk region claimed Ukraine struck the Adriatic Restaurant in the city of Lysychansk on Saturday with the US-supplied shell.
The restaurant had a bakery set up for civilians, who were caught up in the blast and buried under its rubble, Moscow-appointed official Leonid Pasechnik said in a statement.
Pasechnik said 28 people were killed in the explosion and another 10 people were quickly rescued from the debris.
At least four more people were pulled out by Sunday morning, with all of them listed in “extremely grave condition,” according to Russia’s emergency ministry.
Moscow’s Foreign Ministry condemned Saturday’s strike and attempted to use the incident to warn the European Union of what its money would be used for after the EU agreed to allocate 50 billion euros, or more than $54 billion, to Kyiv.
“EU citizens should know how their taxes are used – they are used to buy deadly weapons systems and send them to the Kyiv regime which uses them to kill civilians,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
Ukrainian officials have yet to comment on Saturday’s attack.
The explosion in Luhansk occurred during a heightened series of strikes between Moscow and Kyiv over the past 24 hours, with Ukraine’s General Staff warning Sunday that Russia has ramped up its assaults along the front lines.
At least one civilian was killed and two others injured by Russian artillery fire aimed at the border town of Toretsk, according to Donetsk regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin.
Kyiv officials said Russia conducted 16 separate shellings along northern communities, while the Ukraine has also launched a series of counterattacks.
On Saturday, reports surfaced that a pair of Ukrainian drones struck a major oil refinery in southwest Russia, sparking a fire and marking the latest assault against the Kremlin’s fuel facilities.
The drone strike hit a refinery owned by Lukoil, an industry behemoth that has been described as “one of the leading companies in the Russian oil and gas industry.”
A Ukrainian source told Reuters, “By hitting oil refineries working for the Russian military-industrial complex, we not only cut off the logistics of fuel supplies for enemy equipment but also reduce the filling of the Russian budget.”
With Post wires
