INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Updates with new death toll.A missile attack on the Russian-controlled city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine on Friday killed four people and
injured over 40, Russian officials said.The eastern Luhansk region is almost entirely under Russian control
Moscow claimed to have annexed it in 2022.The main city, also called Luhansk, came under a "massive" missile attack, according to its
Russia-appointed leader, Leonid Pasechnik.A section of an apartment block collapsed and the "bodies of four peaceful civilians killed were
removed from the rubble," the Moscow-backed region's government said on Telegram, raising the toll from three."According to the latest
information, 43 people were injured by the missile strike on Luhansk," the regional authorities added.The strike ripped open the facade of a
five-story Soviet-era apartment block from the roof to the ground and left a deep crater in the ground, images posted by the Russian
emergency services showed.Rescuers carried out one elderly casualty on a stretcher, footage posted by the emergency services
showed."Ukrainian nationalists in the daytime launched a massive attack on civilian infrastructure of Luhansk," regional head Pasechnik said
on Telegram."In one multi-story block, a section has entirely collapsed
There are people under the ruins
Rescuers are working to free them," Pasechnik said.The strike damaged a total of 33 apartment blocks in the east of the city as well as two
schools, three kindergartens and a higher education college, Pasechnik said.The Russian Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of targeting
civilian areas, saying "the Kyiv regime..
deliberately fired five U.S.-made ATACMS missiles at residential districts of the city of Luhansk.""Four American missiles were shot down by
One missile struck two apartment blocks," the ministry said.The strike came as Russia's Defense Ministry claimed fresh advances against
Kyiv's stretched military.Over the last week, Russian troops "improved their positions along the front line and liberated the settlement of
Paraskoviivka," the ministry said.In the central city of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian shelling killed a 71-year-old woman,
the regional authorities said.The city is on the Dnipro River and Russian forces control the opposite bank.
