At least 20 wounded as Russia hits Ukraine’s Mykolaiv, Odesa port

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Latest Russian air attacks hit Ukrainian port cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa, local officials say.

At least 18 people have been wounded by a Russian air attack on the Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said, while authorities in the Odesa region reported two injured in a third night of air raids.

A three-storey residential building was hit in the Mykolaiv city centre early on Thursday morning, Kim wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Five children were among 18 people wounded, Kim said, without specifying their condition or if they had been in the residential building.

“There is a huge hole in the ground near a three-story residential building,” Mykolaiv’s mayor Oleksandr Senkevych wrote on Telegram.

Emergency services were working at the site, he said.

“At least five residential high-rise buildings” had been damaged and at another address “about 15 garages” were damaged, he added.

Ukraine’s air force warned on Telegram that supersonic missiles had been launched by Russia in the direction of the Odesa region on Thursday morning. It called on people to stay undercover.

According to Odesa administration spokesperson Serhiy Bratchuk, two people were hospitalised after a Russian attack on Odesa city damaged a building and caused a fire. Another attack was reported outside the city, he wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the second night of Russian drone and missile attacks on Odesa on Wednesday saying that Moscow is attacking the entire world, not just Ukrainians.

“About a million tons of food is stored in the ports that were attacked today. This is the volume that should have been delivered to consumer countries in Africa and Asia long ago,” Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter.

“The port terminal that suffered the most from the [Russian] terror last night had 60,000 tons of agricultural products stored in it, which were intended to be shipped to China… everyone is affected by this Russian terror. Everyone in the world should be interested in bringing [Russia] to justice for its terror,” he wrote.

Today’s 🇷🇺 terrorists’ attack on Odesa proves that their target is not only 🇺🇦, and not only the lives of our people. About a million tons of food is stored in the ports that were attacked today. This is the volume that should have been delivered to consumer countries in Africa… pic.twitter.com/7jbz9TaqKg

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 19, 2023

 

There were also reports of an attack in Russian-controlled Crimea early on Thursday.

The Moscow-installed governor of the region said a Ukrainian drone attack in northwest Crimea had damaged administrative buildings and killed a teenage girl.

“As a result of an attack by an enemy UAV, four administrative buildings were damaged in one of the settlements in the northwest of Crimea,” Sergei Aksyonov said on Telegram.

“Unfortunately, it didn’t pass without victims – a teenage girl died.”

This is a developing story. More to follow soon.