Russia Fires Missiles On Western Ukraine, Killing Boy

Ukraine said Friday that Russian forces had fired Kinzhal hypersonic missiles on western Ukraine, targeting an airfield but killing an eight-year-old boy who lived nearby

Kyiv, Ukraine, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Aug, 2023 ) :Ukraine said Friday that Russian forces had fired Kinzhal hypersonic missiles on western Ukraine, targeting an airfield but killing an eight-year-old boy who lived nearby.

Of four missiles fired from southern and central Russia, one was shot down over the Kyiv region by air defences, but the rest struck close to an airfield in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region at around 0700 GMT, the Ukrainian air force said.

The brunt of fighting between Ukrainian forces and invading Russian troops has played out in the industrial east of the country but Moscow sporadically launches strikes targeting infrastructure in western Ukraine too.

Prosecutors said missiles struck civilian facilities and a residential area in the region in the Carpathian mountains known for its ski slopes.

"The missiles hit territory near a private house in the Kolomyia district, where a family with three children lived. An eight-year-old boy died as a result of the shelling," their statement said, accompanied by pictures of a house and outbuilding with destroyed roofs.

Kolomyia is a smallish city in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.

The boy, named only as Volodya, short for Volodymyr, was in the yard when the attack came and "received numerous shrapnel wounds", the mayor of Kolomyia, Bogdan Stanislavskyi, wrote on Telegram messenger service.

He was hospitalised but doctors could not save him, the mayor said, announcing two days of mourning at the weekend.

The boy had moved to the area with his family at a young age and attended kindergarten and school there, finishing second grade this year, the mayor said.

"He was a very inquisitive, diligent and cheerful child," he added.

"This is a terrible and very painful loss." Prosecutors added they were clarifying information about other possible victims.

Kinzhal missiles make up part of an arsenal of weapons that Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed were indestructible because of the speed at which they travel.

The air force said that Russia had launched the missiles from Tula, some 180 kilometres south of the Russian capital and Lipetsk, around 460 kilometres from Moscow.