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Many people were killed in a Ukrainian rocket attack on a school building where Russian soldiers were stationed. Reports of the death toll vary widely. According to Ukraine, the victims are 400. The Russian Defense Ministry confirms the attack, but says 63 Russians were killed.
The attack was on the Ukrainian town of Makijivka in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region. 25 rockets were said to have been fired at the building towards the end of the year. These were US-supplied Himar missiles. Russia says six Himars went down and two were intercepted.
A Russian-backed official calls it a “hard blow”. The Guardian writes that the killed soldiers were recently mobilized from Moscow and then sent to Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian military, 300 people were also injured.
The remains of the school building can be seen in these pictures:
Building with stationed Russian soldiers destroyed after Ukrainian rocket attack
Igor Girkin, former defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, writes in Telegram that the number of dead and wounded “is heading towards the many hundreds”. Girkin follows the war in Ukraine and is regularly critical of the way Russia wages war. He is also one of those sentenced for the shooting down of flight MH17.
He says ammunition was also stored in the school building. It would also have exploded on impact, leaving almost nothing of the building. The military equipment that was next to it was also destroyed in the attack.
If hundreds were actually killed, it would be one of Ukraine’s deadliest attacks on Russian targets during the war.
