Russian missiles struck the centre of Ukraine’s Pokrovsk twice on Monday night (7 August) killing eight people, including five civilians, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a statement.
The second missile hit the Ukraine-controlled town near the frontline in Donetsk Oblast 40 minutes after the first, the governor said. It killed and injured first responders, witnesses of the strikes told a Reuters cameraman at the scene.
Two rescuers and one military person were among the dead. Nine policemen and one military person were wounded, but most of the 31 injured were civilians, including a member of the local city council, Ukrainian officials said.
Kateryna, a 58-year-old resident of Pokrovsk, was at home when she heard the first blast and thought that the attack spared her. She even told someone who called to check on her that she was alright but at this moment the place was hit for the second time.
“That’s it, bang – and that’s all. A flame filled up my eyes. I fell down on the floor, on the ground. My eyes (hurt) a lot…,” Kateryna told Reuters in an interview pointing at multiple scratches around her eyes. She had bandages on her forehead.
The footage from the town showed rescuers going through the rubble, a wreckage of a car and an apartment building with torn down balconies.
Another resident, 75-year-old Lidia, said she was also on the phone at the moment of the second blast. She had picked up from the floor a torn white curtain covered with broken glass.
“Suddenly this flew out and wrapped me up. Then the window fell on me,” she said sitting on her sofa.
“My back has cuts. I just got back from the hospital… My knee and my thigh have cuts. I had glass here,” she said pointing at her head.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, reported two more civilian victims of Russian strikes in Kruhliakivka village in the Kharkiv region.
Killed were a 45-year-old woman and a man around 60 and five people were injured, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Synehubov said.
Counteroffensive
Ukrainian troops are creating conditions to advance forward step-by-step and have the initiative on the battlefield, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief said on Monday.
Kyiv’s defensive lines are stable with troops repelling Russian attempts to counter-attack and distract Ukrainian forces from other parts of the front, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
“Heavy fighting is underway, and step-by-step, Ukrainian troops are continuing to create the conditions to advance. The initiative is on our side,” Zaluzhnyi said after a telephone call with U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley.
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive at the start of the summer, attempting to retake swathes of territory captured by Russia in the south and east of the country.
The United States and other Western allies have sent Ukraine weapons and trained Ukrainian soldiers to help Kyiv with the offensive.
Ukraine has so far recaptured several villages in the south and some territory around the ruined city of Bakhmut in the east. Kyiv has yet to attempt a major breakthrough across heavily defended Russian lines.
Ukrainian officials have brushed aside criticism that they are advancing slowly, saying they are trying to avoid high casualties as they attack well-fortified Russian lines that are strewn with landmines.
Moscow says the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed.
Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, said Russia was using all its resources to stop Kyiv’s advance, but that Ukrainian troops were continuing to move toward the southern cities of Melitopol and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov.
Zaluzhnyi said Ukraine’s defensive lines were strong.
“In some directions, the enemy is conducting active assaults but they are having no success. In particular, it is related to their attempts to distract Ukrainian forces from certain areas of the front,” he said.
Maliar said the intensity of the Russian shelling had increased in the east in the past week.