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Five people were killed in a Ukrainian rocket attack on a town in southwestern Russia’s Kursk region on Friday afternoon, Russian regional authorities said.
“Ukrainian nationalists deliberately chose peaceful sites and public facilities as their targets,” acting Kursk region Governor Alexander Khinshtein, who was meeting with federal lawmakers in Moscow, said in an initial video message on Telegram. He said the attack happened in the town of Rylsk, which has a population of less than 15,000 people.
“I’ve already sent the acting chairman of the [Kursk region] government, Alexei Dedov, and his deputies to the site [of the rocket attack],” Khinshtein said, adding that emergency service personnel were responding to the incident.
Later on Friday, the acting governor said five adults and one child were killed in the strikes, which he said were carried out with U.S.-made HIMARS rockets. However, that figure was eventually corrected to five deaths, and no child was killed, Khinshtein said.
Another 12 people were injured, among whom 9 required hospitalization. Regional authorities in Kursk promised to pay 1.5 million rubles ($14,570) to the families of those killed in the attack, as well as between 300,000 and 900,000 rubles to those who were injured.
“I am sure that the perpetrators of this bloody crime will receive well-deserved retribution,” Khinshtein said. “Our army and law enforcement agencies will do everything necessary for this.”
Videos shared online showed the aftermath of Friday’s strike on Rylsk, with several cars engulfed in flames and multiple buildings badly damaged. Rylsk is located around 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) east of Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Rylsk district head, Andrei Belusov, told RIA Novosti that facilities used by the public were among the buildings targeted in the town. He said “around 15 strikes” were reported in the attack.
There was no immediate response from the Kremlin or Russia’s Defense Ministry. Ukraine has also not commented on the rocket attack.
Earlier on Friday, Russia carried a missile strike on Kyiv in what it called retaliation for a strike using Western-supplied missiles on a chemical plant in Russia earlier in the week. One person was killed and nearly a dozen others were injured in that attack.
