At least five people were killed and over 100 injured when missile fragments scattered over beachgoers during a Ukrainian strike on the city of Sevastopol in Russia-occupied Crimea, authorities say.
“Unfortunately, we currently have 124 victims, of which three [are] dead children and two [are] dead adults,” Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said in a post on Telegram that Ukraine carried out the attack using “US-supplied ATACMS operational-tactical missiles equipped with cluster warheads.”
Four missiles were shot down by Russian air defense but another “deviated from its flight trajectory in the final section due to the impact of air defenses, with the warhead exploding in the air over the city,” the post added.
Video footage posted on X shows the aftermath of the strike, with wounded civilians seen being carried from the beach in stretchers before being loaded into vehicles. Beachgoers, some of them still in their swimwear, can be seen evacuating the area.
One of victims killed in the Ukrainian strike was the daughter of Oleg Averyanov, Deputy Mayor of Magadan. Yuri Grishan, the Mayor of Magadan, said Averyanov’s daughter Sofia was nine and on vacation with her parents in Sevastopol.
The casualties were partially caused by the timing of the strike, which came “at a time when civilians, some were returning from work, some had already gone to the beach with their children,” according to Governor Razvozhayev, who has announced a day of mourning.
According to eyewitnesses on the ground, there was no air raid siren which warned of the attack. Many local residents also took to the comment section of official posts to express their dissatisfaction about the air raid siren not alerting them to an incoming attack.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/23/europe/at-leastfivedead-and-over-100-injured-in-ukrainian-strike-in-russian-occupied-crimea/index.html 