Around four people have been killed and 13 others wounded after an alleged missile attack on a civilian bridge over the Dnipro River, pro-Kremlin authorities in Ukraine’s occupied Kherson region said on Friday, accusing the attack on Kyiv’s forces.
Kherson’s Moscow-installed leader, Kirill Stremousov, said that, “I know about the four people who died. They were one woman and three men. One was found this morning.”
As per reports, Stremousov, Kherson’s Moscow-installed leader, as saying. Pro-Kremlin authorities claimed that local journalists as well as minors were among the injured.
According to Kremlin-aligned sources, Ukrainian forces targeted the area with 12 U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets.
Meanwhile, 11 rockets were said to have been intercepted by air-defence systems, one of them allegedly arrived near the Antonivka Bridge, the only bridge spanning the Dnipro in the city of Kherson.
At the same time, western analysts have said that even the most advanced Russian air-defence systems are virtually incapable of intercepting HIMARS rockets.
The Antonivka Bridge has been closed to whole traffic since July after sustaining damage amid frequent attacks by Ukrainian forces, who attempted to sever the Russian military’s supply line over the river. Local pro-Kremlin authorities later built a parallel pontoon bridge and organized ferry crossings to facilitate movement over the river.
Pro-Kremlin officials in Kherson ordered the evacuation of local residents and authorities to the left bank of the Dnipro River earlier this week amid sweeping advances by Kyiv’s forces in the area.
According to local pro-Moscow official Vladimir Saldo, as if as 60,000 people will be moved over the river to Russian-occupied territories as part of the evacuation.