LAST UPDATE | 28 Jan 2023

THREE PEOPLE HAVE been killed and more than a dozen wounded following a Russian strike on the city of Konstantynivka in eastern Ukraine, the local governor has said.

“The Russians fired at a residential neighbourhood, damaged four multi-storey buildings, a hotel, garages and civilian cars,” Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on social media.

“Three civilians were killed. At least two were wounded,” he said.

Later in the day Kyrylenko gave an updated toll of 14 injured.

Kyrylenko said rescue workers and police were at the scene, “helping people and carefully documenting yet another crime by the Russian occupiers on our land”.

Images posted on Kyrylenko’s Telegram account showed apartment buildings with blown-out windows and debris scattered around the charred remains of a car.

According to Ukraine’s defence ministry, Russia carried out attacks on Konstantynivka with multiple rocket launchers.

Almost a year into its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow is seeking to seize control of the entire Donetsk region, which it has already declared a part of Russia.

Ukraine said this week that Russian troops had stepped up their attacks in the east, particularly on the towns of Vugledar and Bakhmut.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said yesterday that the situation on the front was “extremely acute”, particularly in the Donetsk region.

Separately, Russia’s defence ministry has accused the Ukrainian army of striking a hospital in the eastern Lugansk region, leaving 14 dead and injuring 24 others.

This morning in the town of Novoaidar, “the Ukrainian armed forces deliberately attacked the building of a district hospital with rockets of a US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry added that 14 were killed and 24 wounded among the “hospital patients and medical staff”.

© AFP 2023