Russia launched an attack on the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson on Sunday, resulting in the death of a family, including a 22-day-old infant, and the injury of at least 22 others.
The situation has prompted local officials in Ukraine to declare Monday a day of mourning, and President Volodymyr Zelensky promised justice to the victims. The attack came as Kyiv was able to reclaim a portion of Kherson from Russian occupation last November.
Russia Shells Ukraine's Kherson Region
However, Kremlin troops have continued to launch shell attacks on the regional capital and areas around it from across the Dnipro River. Authorities reported that the five people killed were in the village of Shyroka Balka.
Zelensky identified two more family members as a 12-year-old boy who died from injuries he obtained from the attack and his 39-year-old mother, Olesia. In a Telegram post, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said that terrorists will never stop killing civilians and must be stopped with force because they understand nothing else, as per Reuters.
Kherson Gov. Oleksandry Prokudin said that two people, including the pastor of a church, were the fatal victims of the attack in the neighboring village of Stanislav. The interior ministry also noted that three people each from Kherson and the town of Beryslav were injured. There were also casualties reported in five other settlements across the region.
In a statement on Telegram, Prokudin said that the terrible news of the attack shook the Kherson region. He noted that the settlements that Russia targeted were Balka, Kherson, Komyshany, Shyroka Balka, Stanislav, Veletenske, and Zolota.
On the evening of the latest attack, the local Kherson government said that a new air strike and artillery shelling wounded a 31-year-old woman and a man. Officials noted that the assault also damaged at least 12 houses in Bilozerka. They said that three guided aerial bombs were used to target several houses in the village of Odradokamianka.
On Saturday, Ukrainian military officials said that Kyiv's forces were making progress against Moscow's troops located in southern Ukraine. According to Aljazeera, they were able to claim some success near a key village in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Ukraine's Counteroffensive
Ukraine's General Staff said that it achieved "partial success" around the Robotyne area in the Zaporizhzhia region. Officials consider the area a key Russian stronghold that is needed to be controlled if Kyiv wants to continue pushing its forces south toward Melitopol.
Geral Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said that they were able to liberate some territories, arguing that Ukraine's defense forces are working. Battles have occurred in the last few weeks in multiple areas along the more than 1,000-kilometer front line amid Ukraine's counteroffensive.
The attack also follows Ukrainian deputy defense minister Hanna Maliar's comments on Saturday, where she tried to quell rumors that Ukrainian troops landed on the occupied left bank of the Dnipro in the Kherson region.
Since launching the counteroffensive in June, Ukrainian forces have only made incremental gains in taking back territories, said The Guardian.
