Ukrainian officials have accused the Kremlin's forces of targeting rescue workers as the death toll from two Russian missile strikes that slammed into a the city of Pokrovsk climbed to seven.
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The dead in the Monday evening strikes were five civilians, one rescuer and one soldier, Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said. Dozens more were wounded, most of them police officers, emergency workers and soldiers who'd rushed to the scene to assist residents.
The Iskander missiles hit the centre of Pokrovsk, which is in the eastern Donetsk region that is partially occupied by Russia. Emergency crews were still removing rubble at the scene on Tuesday.
Russia has repeatedly aimed artillery and missiles at the same spot 30 minutes after an earlier hit, often hitting emergency workers deployed at the scene. It's a tactic, called a "double tap" in military jargon, that the Russians also used in Syria's civil war.
"All of (the police) were there because they were needed, putting their efforts into rescuing people after the first strike," Ivan Vyhivskyi, chief of Ukraine's National Police, said Tuesday. "They knew that under the rubble were the injured -- they needed to react, to dig, to retrieve, to save. And the enemy deliberately struck the second time."
Russia's Ministry of Defence claimed it hit a Ukrainian army command post in Pokrovsk. Neither side's claims could be independently verified.
Among those injured was Volodymyr Nikulin, a policeman originally from the now Russian-occupied port city of Mariupol.
Arriving at the scene after the first missile strike, Nikulin was wounded in the second strike when missile shrapnel pierced his left lung and left hand.
Like others, Nikulin was taken to a hospital in the city. But there were so many injured that he was still waiting for surgery on Tuesday morning. He was later transported to a hospital in Dnipro, where he was to undergo surgery to remove the shrapnel.
The head of the Pokrovsk City Administration, Serhii Dobriak, described the attacks on Pokrovsk as "a typical Russian scenario: 30-40 minutes between missiles."
"When rescuers come to save people's lives, another rocket arrives. And the number of casualties increases," he said in a video comment to local media.
Kyrylenko, the regional governor, said that 12 multi-story buildings were damaged in Pokrovsk as well as a hotel, a pharmacy, two stores and two cafes.
Meanwhile, an overnight attack on the town of Kruhliakivka, in the northeastern Kharkiv region, killed three people and injured nine others, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.
Russia also dropped four guided bombs on a village near Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, killing two civilians, Ukraine's presidential office said.
Rescuers later came under fire and two of them were injured, it said.
Australian Associated Press
