A local official says at least 10 people have died in shelling in Russian-occupied Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) —

A local Kremlin-installed official blamed Ukraine on Saturday for a shelling that killed 10 people, including children, in a Russian-occupied town in the southern Zaporizhzhia region the previous day.

The Tokmak municipal administration reported on Telegram that the shelling struck three apartment blocks Friday evening. Five people were pulled alive from the rubble and 13 people were hospitalized, according to the Kremlin-installed regional head Yevhen Balitsky.

Russian emergency services continued Saturday to look for civilians trapped under the ruins of their homes in Tokmak, a part of southern Ukraine that Moscow has illegally annexed from Kyiv after its war on Ukraine started in 2022.

A Ukrainian rocket struck a machine-building plant in Russian-occupied Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, injuring three civilians, posted Vladimir Rogov, a Moscow-based official who helps set Russian government policy in the illegally annexed territories, on Telegram Saturday.

Leonid Pasechnik, a Kremlin-installed official who reported the strike, said on Telegram that Russian-appointed authorities in Luhansk had planned to put the plant back into operation “in the near future,” but did not say what would have been produced there.

Rogov and Pasechnik reported that the rocket strike also damaged residential homes, but did not immediately provide evidence backing their claim.

A video featured in Rogov’s Telegram post showed a column of smoke rising into the sky behind a low-rise house, which appeared unharmed.

Ukrainian officials did not immediately acknowledge or comment on either attack.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Russian forces shelled a car making food deliveries in the northern Chernihiv region on Saturday, killing its civilian driver, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Chaus said.

Two civilians also died as a result of a Russian attack on Friday and overnight, according to officials. Both deaths occurred in the front-line Donetsk region in the east, according to Telegram posts by local Gov. Vadym Filashkin.

In the Kharkiv region in the northeast, overnight Russian shelling left a man trapped under rubble and wounded a second man, according to local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov and Ukrainian emergency services. Both have been hospitalized, according to a Telegram update by the state emergency service.

Local Ukrainian officials reported over a dozen civilians were wounded by Russian shelling on Friday and overnight in the country’s north, south and east.

It was not immediately possible to verify the claims by Balitsky or the Ukrainian authorities.

The Associated Press