“Attacks in Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions leave 27 dead,” Moscow officials say | World News

Russian-appointed officials in Ukraine’s partially occupied Kherson and Luhansk regions said at least 27 people had been killed in Ukrainian attacks as Russia and Ukraine continued to trade drone strikes on Saturday night.

A Ukrainian attack on the small town of Sadove in the partially occupied Ukrainian region of Kherson on Friday killed 22 people and injured 15, said Moscow-backed governor Vladimir Saldo.

The Russian state news agency Tass quoted Saldo as saying that the Ukrainian armed forces had first attacked the city with a French-made guided bomb and then again with a HIMARS missile supplied by the USAHe said Ukrainian forces had “deliberately carried out a repeat strike to cause even more casualties” as “residents ran out of nearby houses to help the injured.”

Further east, Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-appointed governor of Ukraine’s partially occupied Luhansk region, said on Saturday that two more bodies had been recovered from the rubble following a Ukrainian missile attack on the capital, also called Luhansk, on Friday, bringing the death toll to five. Pasechnik also said 60 people were injured in the attack.

Ukraine did not comment on either attack.

Meanwhile, drone attacks continued between Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine launched a drone attack on Russian territory on Friday night, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday. According to reports, 25 drones were destroyed over the southern Russian regions of Kuban and Astrakhan, the western region of Tula and the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow.

On Saturday morning, officials said that air defenses had shot down Ukrainian drones for the first time over the North Ossetia region in the North Caucasus, about 900 kilometers from the front line in the partially occupied Ukrainian region of Zaporizhia.

The Russian Defense Ministry said one drone had been destroyed, while the region’s governor, Sergei Menyailo, reported three drones shot down over the region. Menyailo said the target was a military airfield.

Ukrainian air defenses shot down nine of 13 Russian drones overnight over the central Poltava region, the southeastern regions of Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk, and the Kharkiv region in the northeast, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Saturday.

Dnipropetrovsk Region Governor Serhiy Lysak said the nighttime drone strike damaged commercial and residential buildings.