UKRAINE: A Russian missile strike on the Odesa airport Saturday damaged the runway, rendering it useless, the Ukrainian military reported.
One witness told CNN News that she saw at least one combat plane over the southern city; the blasts were heard soon after air raid sirens sounded across the city.
Meanwhile, Russian forces pounded Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region Saturday but failed to capture three target areas, Ukraine’s military said.
The taregt areas were Lyman in Donetsk and Sievierodonetsk and Popasna in Luhansk, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in its daily update.
“Not succeeding – the fighting continues,” it noted.
Regional police said Saturday that Russian forces had shelled 12 settlements in the Donetsk Oblast over the past 24 hours, destroying at least 36 civilian infrastructure sites, among them a school and a hospital, according to the Kyiv Independent newspaper.
Police said at least four civilians were killed, including one child, and another eight civilians injured, also including children.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian police said they had found the bodies of three civilian men in the Bucha district, north of Kyiv.
Police said the bodies were in a pit and the victims’ hands were bound, their eyes were covered and two were gagged.
“There are traces of torture on the corpses, as well as gunshot wounds to various parts of the body,” Kyiv’s regional police chief Andriy Nebytov said in a statement.
“The victims were tortured for a long period of time; bullet wounds were found on the extremities. Finally, each of the men was shot in the ear.”
(VOA)
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