Six fatalities reported following missile attack in Odesa and artillery fire in Eastern Ukraine by Russian forces

In an overnight strike, Russian forces directed cruise missiles at Odesa, a city situated in southern Ukraine. Concurrently, artillery fire led to the demolition of houses in Donetsk, a region in eastern Ukraine, early on Wednesday. Regional authorities reported a minimum of six fatalities and injuries to over a dozen people.

A spokesperson for the Ukrainian military stated that Russian forces have escalated their aerial bombardment in their ongoing 15-month conflict with Ukraine. This comes alongside claims of minor advancements reported by Ukrainian troops in a preliminary counterattack.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the regional governor of Donetsk, communicated via Telegram that a minimum of three casualties occurred due to artillery fire. This event resulted in the destruction of seven houses and inflicted damage on numerous others in the cities of Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka.

Simultaneously in Odesa, a missile strike resulted in the death of three food warehouse workers and caused injuries to seven others. The assault affected residences, a warehouse, shops, and cafes in the city center, according to the regional administration’s Facebook post. An additional six individuals – security guards and house residents from the adjacent area – sustained injuries.

In their search for potential survivors amid the rubble, the rescue team identified that the assault on the harbor city was initiated from the Black Sea using four Kalibr cruise missiles. The city’s administration stated that air defenses intercepted three of these missiles.

Andriy Kovalov, who represents the General Staff of Ukraine, indicated an escalation in missile and aerial strikes by Russian forces on Ukraine. He confirmed during a briefing that the strikes were targeted at the Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kirovohrad, and Odesa regions. The assault involved the usage of Kh-22 and sea-launched Kalibr cruise missiles along with Iranian-manufactured Shahed drones. Nine of these were intercepted.

Kovalov noted advancements made by Ukrainian forces across various sections of the nearly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) battlefront. Continuous combat was reported in or near at least two settlements in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Russian forces currently hold and control close to one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

The British Ministry of Defense, which regularly posts updates on the ongoing conflict, highlighted via Twitter that southern Ukraine often witnesses more Russian air operations in comparison to other areas of the front.

In a separate incident, the mayor of Kryvyi Rih, a central city and also President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown, reported that the death toll from a Russian attack a day earlier on an apartment building had risen to 12.

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