The Pentagon has refused to comment on the deadly Ukrainian cluster munition attack on a crowded beach in Sevastopol, Russia on Sunday, RIA Novosti has reported. The Ukrainian attack carried out with US-supplied ATACMS missiles killed at least four people, among them two children, and injured 151, according to local officials.
Four missiles were intercepted by air defenses, while a fifth deviated from its trajectory and detonated its cluster warhead over the busy Black Sea beach, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
When RIA asked the Pentagon about the use of US supplied weapons in the strike on Sunday, an official replied, “we have seen the reports and have nothing to say.”
Moscow has placed the blame primarily with Washington, accusing it of enabling the “premeditated terrorist missile attack.” The targets for these US-provided missiles are assigned to Ukrainian troops by American specialists, based on their own intelligence data, the Defense Ministry stated.
According to data from the flight tracker Flightradar, a US RQ-4B Global Hawk reconnaissance drone was patrolling in the Black Sea south of Crimea during the Ukrainian missile strike.
The number of people injured in the strike stood at 151 as of Sunday night, according to Sevastopol’s governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev. A joint team of specialists from the Health Ministry’s Federal Center for Disaster Medicine arrived in the city to work with the victims, he wrote early Monday.
Kiev deliberately chooses mass gatherings of people as targets, both out of hatred and to sow panic, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said following the attack. The day of the Holy Trinity holiday was picked deliberately, she claimed.
Ukraine has previously targeted the Crimean Peninsula with US-provided ATACMS missiles. In May, ten ATACMS were shot down on a trajectory aimed at the strategic Crimean Bridge, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov said at the time.