The death toll from a Ukrainian strike on a college in a Russian-occupied town in eastern Ukraine has risen to 12, Russian officials said on Saturday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the drone barrage that hit the college dormitory in Starobilsk overnight on Thursday to Friday and ordered his army to prepare a response.
Ukraine denied targeting civilians and said it had hit a Russian drone unit stationed in the Starobilsk area. Russia’s emergency ministry said that “a total of 48 casualties were recorded, 12 of whom were killed. According to preliminary reports, nine people are still trapped under the debris.”
Video shared by the ministry showed dozens of rescuers sifting through what remained of the five-storey dormitory building, now reduced to rubble.
Most of those killed and missing were young women born between 2003 and 2008, according to a list of casualties published by the Moscow-backed governor of the Lugansk region, Leonid Pasechnik.
“The region and the entire country share the fate of these people and the pain of their families,” he said on Telegram.
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Friday that those responsible would face “inevitable and severe punishment”.
Ukraine regularly targets Russian-controlled areas of the country with drones, saying the strikes are retaliation for Russian attacks.
The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has recorded more than 60,000 civilian casualties since 2022, almost 90 percent of which were in areas controlled by Ukraine.
Starobilsk is located about 65 kilometres (40 miles) from the front line in east Ukraine.
Russian forces captured the town in 2022, shortly after launching their full-scale offensive. The Lugansk region is almost entirely occupied by Russia, which claims it as its own.
