Ukrainian shelling kills 11 in Russia-controlled eastern Ukraine - TASS
Ukrainian shelling of a Russian-controlled village in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine killed at least 11 people on Friday and 20 were missing, the Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing emergency services.
The shelling hit the village of Lantrativka, a settlement close to the border with Russia, Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-installed administrator of the region, said in a post on his Telegram channel.
Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield reports.
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TASS reported emergency services as saying 11 people had been killed, around 20 were wounded and another 20 were unaccounted for after a building was hit by a Ukrainian missile strike early in the morning.
Pasechnik called the attack "barbaric" and said Ukraine was targeting residential neighbourhoods, schools and shopping districts in an attempt to "kill as many people as possible". There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war that Russia launched on Feb. 24 in what it calls a "special military operation" to disarm its neighbour. At least two died in the central city of Kryvyi Rih on Friday as Russia pounded energy facilities across Ukraine.
Russian-backed Luhansk officials at the Joint Centre of Control and Coordination - a ceasefire monitoring body set up to help manage the conflict between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces after 2014 - said Ukraine had fired three U.S.-made HIMARS rockets at Lantrativka at 4.10 a.m. (0210 GMT) on Friday.
The head of the "people's militia" in Luhansk also reported on his Telegram channel that one civilian had been killed by Ukrainian shelling in the town of Svatove on Friday morning.
