Updated: 4:30pm (AEDT)
Reuters
Russia’s emergencies ministry said its workers had retrieved the bodies of 20 people from the rubble following a Ukrainian attack on a building housing a bakery in the city of Lysychansk in the occupied eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk on Saturday.
The ministry shared video of emergency workers lifting two bloodied people onto stretchers and carrying them in the darkness out of the ruins of a building.
Emergency responders retrieve bodies from the rubble of a devastated building following a Ukrainian attack on the city of Lysychansk, in the occupied eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, in this picture obtained from social media on 3rd February, 2024. PICTURE: Russian Emergencies Ministry/via Reuters.
The ministry said previously that its workers rescued 10 people and handed them to doctors.
From the design and color of the building and a sign matching file imagery of the area, Reuters was able to confirm the location of a separate, daytime video the emergencies ministry shared. It matches a location on Google maps identified as Adriatic Restaurant on Moskovska Street, Lysychansk.
However Reuters was unable to independently verify the date of the footage filmed, nor of any other details of the report coming out of an area Russia said it annexed in 2022.
Ukrainian officials have not made any statement on the incident.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said “dozens of civilians” were in the building at the time of the attack and that Western weapons were used.
The Russian-controlled Luhansk Information Centre said Ukraine shelled the bakery using the US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
Russia’s state-run TASS news agency quoted a Russian-installed official in operational services as saying the average age of the victims was “35 years, plus or minus five years.”
“There are no children among the dead at the moment, but the removal of rubble is still ongoing,” it quoted the official as saying.
Earlier, Leonid Pasechnik, put in charge of Ukraine’s Luhansk region by Moscow, said dozens of people may be under the rubble.
