MOSCOW: Five people were killed and 46 injured in a Ukrainian attack on the southwestern Russian city of Belgorod late on Friday, the local governor said, the latest in a series of strikes by Ukraine on the city in recent months.
Vyacheslav Gladkov said 37 of the injured, including seven children, were taken to hospitals in the city, which lies 40 km north of the border with Ukraine.
Video filmed from inside a vehicle, posted on social media and purporting to show the attack, showed a car being blown up while moving along a road. Seconds later another explosion is seen metres away. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video.
Russia's Foreign Ministry condemned the attack. "Once again we call on all responsible governments and relevant international structures to strongly condemn this brutal terrorist attack and publicly distance themselves from the Kyiv regime and its Western curators who commit such crimes," it said on Saturday.
The ministry added that Russia's "special military operation" will continue until it reaches all the goals including Ukraine's "demilitarisation and de-nazification".
Russia's Investigation Committee said on its Telegram channel that it had initiated a criminal case into the attack.
Authorities also reported that a woman was injured on Saturday during Ukrainian shelling of the border town of Shebekino in the Belgorod region.
Ukraine has staged frequent attacks on Belgorod and other Russian border regions in recent months, with the city the focal point of the attacks.
Ukraine and Russia say they do not deliberately target civilians in the war that began when Russia sent thousands of troops into its neighbour in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Russian forces have gained control of the Kirove settlement, known in Ukraine as Verezamske, in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region, the defence ministry said on Saturday.
Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian regions which Russia says it has annexed even though it does not fully control all of them, a territorial claim which Kyiv and the West have rejected as illegal and one which Ukraine has vowed to reverse by force.
Separately, the defence ministry said in a bulletin about developments in Russia's Kursk region that its forces had repelled Ukrainian attacks there, including towards settlements of Korenevo and Malaya Loknya. — Reuters
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