The Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations today raised the death toll to 28 in the attack carried out on Saturday by Ukrainian artillery against a bakery in the annexed eastern region of Lugansk.
“Emergency personnel saved ten people. Unfortunately, 28 people, including a child, have died,” the official statement said.
Among the dead are 18 men, 9 women and a child, to which must be added four seriously injured people who are in intensive care.
The two-story building in the city of Lisichansk, inhabited by about 100,000 before the start of the war, allegedly collapsed as a result of the impact of an enemy shell.
The rescue efforts took place throughout the night and will continue throughout the day on Sunday, since emergency personnel have only reviewed 65% of the building’s rubble.
The leader of the Lugansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, initially assured that dozens of people could have been trapped in the building.
Pasechnik, who declared Sunday a day of mourning in the republic, denounced on Saturday a massive attack against the city, under the control of the Russian Army since July 2022.
The spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, demanded that international organizations “unconditionally condemn” the Ukrainian attack.
Zakharova added that the bombing carried out, according to preliminary data, with Western weapons, represented Ukrainian “gratitude” for the “generous” assistance of 50 billion euros approved this week by the European Union.
In mid-January, a similar attack left around thirty civilians dead and around twenty injured in a market in the capital of Donetsk.
