Ukrainian forces have attacked several temporary shelters for people evacuated in the wake of the breach of the Kakhovka dam, the acting governor of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, said on Saturday morning, sharing pictures of the devastated facility.
The strike on the shelter on the left bank of the Dnieper River was carried out around 5am local time, allegedly using British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles, Saldo said in a statement. There was at least one casualty, a woman, according to preliminary information.
The Black Sea village of Zhelezny Port also came under “fierce shelling” overnight, with a local hotel hosting the evacuees “destroyed,” according to the official.
The acting governor shared several pictures of the heavily damaged facility, as well as a video of a villa engulfed in flames.
“The targeted strikes are being carried out with British missiles, delivered to the Kiev regime to unleash ‘peace’ on civilian infrastructure,” Saldo wrote.
Earlier on Friday, one person was killed and another injured after several rockets hit a children's summer camp in the same area. According to Saldo, first responders discovered the debris of Storm Shadows at the scene.
The Russian-held Kakhovka dam in Kherson Region was destroyed early on Tuesday morning. Several people were killed, while thousands more were exposed to flooding.
Kherson authorities declared a state of emergency across the entire territory controlled by Russia. Saldo said that a total of between 22,000 and 40,000 people were located in the disaster area.
Moscow and Kiev have traded accusations over who is to blame for the incident, which triggered mass evacuation efforts on both sides of the Dnieper River. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov accused Ukraine of “deliberate sabotage” in a bid to deprive Crimea of drinking water and deflect attention away from Kiev’s botched counteroffensive in Donbass.