Russian missile attack kills 7 in east Ukrainian

People carry a wounded person from a damaged building. Pic/AP

The death toll from two Russian missile strikes that hit apartment blocks and other buildings in an eastern Ukrainian city climbed to seven, with 81 people injured, authorities said Tuesday, as officials accused the Kremlin's forces of targeting rescue workers. Two Russian missiles slammed into the downtown area of Pokrovsk, in the eastern Donetsk region that is partially occupied by Russia, on Monday evening, officials said.

The dead included five civilians, one rescuer and one soldier, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said. Among the wounded were 39 civilians, including two children; 31 police officers; seven emergency workers; and four soldiers. The Iskander missiles, which have an advanced guidance system that increases their accuracy, hit within 40 minutes of each other, according to Kyrylenko.

Russia has since the start of the war aimed artillery and missiles at the exact same spot it struck around 30 minutes earlier, often hitting emergency workers deployed at the scene. "All of the police were there because they were needed, rescuing people after the first strike," Ivan Vyhivskyi, chief of Ukraine's National Police, said on 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."Agencies

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81
No of people injured in the attack

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