Five civilians have been killed and 13 more suffered injuries as a result of a Ukrainian attack on the town of Rakitnoe in Belgorod Region in the early hours of Sunday morning, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has reported.
Nine of the injured have been hospitalized with six of them in serious condition, including a 16-year-old girl who’s currently in intensive care, the official wrote on Telegram.
In a separate post, Gladkov said that three children, including a 12-year-old boy, had been injured as a result of what he described as a “brutal terrorist attack” by Ukrainian forces.
A gas pipeline and an electrical power line in the town have also been damaged as a result of the shelling, Gladkov said.
According to the governor, over the past 24 hours, the region has come under a series of Ukrainian drone attacks and bombardments; residential homes, vehicles and civilian facilities have been left damaged across dozens of towns and villages.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has said that a criminal terrorism case has been launched in the wake of the strike on Rakitnoe. The investigators have pledged to legally assess the nature of the attack and the people involved.
Belgorod Region, like Bryansk Region and Kursk Region, is close to the border with Ukraine, and has been attacked by Kiev’s forces over the course of the ongoing conflict on an almost daily basis. The indiscriminate artillery, missile and drone strikes have inflicted considerable damage on local civilian infrastructure and property, and have left dozens of locals killed or injured.
A federal emergency was declared in Belgorod Region earlier this month, shortly after the Ukrainian military managed to conduct a cross-border incursion into neighboring Kursk Region.
Kiev sent several thousand troops and scores of vehicles across the border on August 6. Moscow responded by hunting down the intruders and pressing the offensive in Donbass. On Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that since the beginning of the incursion, Ukraine has lost over 5,800 troops and hundreds of units of military equipment, including 72 tanks.