ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (Reuters) -A Russian guided bomb attack on Wednesday killed at least 13 people and injured 113 in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, authorities said.
The blast left bodies strewn across a road alongside injured residents. Public transport was also damaged in the strike.
Prosecutors increased the injury toll from 63 to 113 people on Thursday morning. Rescue work had been completed at the site of the attack the evening before.
High-rise apartment blocks were damaged along with an industrial facility and other infrastructure, Ukraine’s prosecutor general office said on Telegram. The debris hit a tram and a bus with passengers inside, it added.
Russian troops had used two guided bombs to hit a residential area, the regional governor Ivan Fedorov told reporters.
Ten of the 60 people in the hospital after the attack remain in serious condition, Fedorov said, adding that Thursday would be an official day of mourning.
On Thursday, he told national television that the city’s medical services received the biggest number of requests for help following an attack since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
“There is nothing more cruel than launching aerial bombs on a city, knowing that ordinary civilians will suffer,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on X, urging Ukraine’s Western allies to step up pressure on Russia.
Regional authorities reported further explosions after the first strike hit.
Fedorov said Russian troops shelled the town of Stepnohirsk, south of Zaporizhzhia, killing two people. Two residents were pulled alive from underneath rubble.
Russia regularly carries out air strikes on the Zaporizhzhia region, which its forces partially occupy. Moscow claims to have annexed the Ukrainian region along with four others including Crimea.
Public broadcaster Suspilne also reported two people killed and 10 injured in attacks on several centres in the southern region of Kherson, also partially occupied by Russian forces.
(Reporting by Serhiy Chalyi in Zaporizhzhia, Yuliia Dysa in Gdansk, Anastasiia Malenko in Kyiv, Ron Popeski; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Gareth Jones, David Gregorio and Christina Fincher)
