Dozens dead after Russia targets military barracks

MYKOLAIV • Dozens of soldiers were killed after Russian troops struck a Ukrainian military barracks in the southern city of Mykolaiv, witnesses said yesterday, with a rescue operation underway.

"No fewer than 200 soldiers were sleeping in the barracks" when Russian troops struck, a Ukrainian serviceman on the ground, 22-year-old Maxim, told AFP without giving his last name. "At least 50 bodies have been recovered, but we do not know how many are in the rubble."

Another soldier estimated that the bombing could have killed 100 people. The authorities have not yet released an official death toll. The military facility located in the city's north was fully destroyed after being hit by several rockets on Friday morning.

"Yesterday, orcs hit our sleeping soldiers with a rocket in a cowardly manner," Mr Vitaly Kim, head of the regional administration, said in a video yesterday, using the Ukrainian nickname for Russian forces. "A rescue operation is under way."

Journalists at the site earlier in the day saw the bodies of three people extracted from under the rubble by rescue workers. A survivor was also pulled out.

Mykolaiv's mayor Oleksandr Senkevych told local journalists that the city, which had a pre-war population of nearly half a million residents, was struck from the neighbouring region of Kherson, now under Russian control.

For days, the Russians have bombarded Mykolaiv, which lies on the road to the strategic port city of Odessa some 130km down the Black Sea coastline.

Ukrainian officials said they had "temporarily" lost access to the Sea of Azov although Russia has controlled the coastline for weeks.

In a separate attack, Russia said it used its newest Kinzhal hypersonic missiles to destroy an underground missile and ammunition storage site in western Ukraine close to the border with Nato member Romania.

"The Kinzhal aviation missile system with hypersonic aeroballistic missiles destroyed a large underground warehouse containing missiles and aviation ammunition in the village of Deliatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk region", the Russian defence ministry said yesterday.

Russia has never before admitted using the high-precision weapon in combat, and state news agency RIA Novosti said it was the first use of the Kinzhal (Dagger) during the conflict in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has termed the Kinzhal air-launched missile "an ideal weapon" that flies at 10 times the speed of sound and can overcome air-defence systems.

Hypersonic missiles can be used to deliver conventional warheads, more rapidly and precisely than other missiles. But their capacity to deliver nuclear weapons could add to a country's threat, increasing dangers of a nuclear conflict.

"This is the first case of the use of hypersonic weapons in combat in the world," military analyst Vasily Kashin told AFP.

Another analyst, Mr Pavel Felgenhauer, suggested the use of the Kinzhal would change little on the ground. He said Russian forces could have used the advanced missiles because they might be running out of other weapons.

"The enemy targeted our depots (but) we have no information of the type of missile," Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ignat said. "There has been damage, destruction and the detonation of munitions. They are using all the missiles in their arsenal against us."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE