Video shows black smoke pouring from facility in Sochi, while Russian attack on Mykolaiv wounds seven people
Video shows black smoke pouring from facility in Sochi, while Russian attack on Mykolaiv wounds seven people
An overnight Ukrainian drone attack on an oil depot near the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi has ignited a raging fire, as the two countries traded strikes at the end of one of the deadliest weeks in Ukraine in recent months.
More than 120 firefighters were trying to put out the blaze, said the regional governor, Veniamin Kondratyev, as emergency officials reported a fuel tank with a capacity of 2,000 cubic metres (70,000 cubic feet) was burning.
Drone wreckage hit an “oil tank, which caused a fire”, Kondratyev said on the Telegram messaging app. Sochi, which hosted the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, is about 250 miles (400km) from the Ukrainian border.
Video clips on social media showed huge black pillars of smoke pouring out from the facility. Russia’s civil aviation authority temporarily halted flights at Sochi airport.
Kyiv has repeatedly pounded infrastructure in Russia that it sees as key to Moscow’s war effort but attacks on Sochi have been relatively rare.
The strike came as a Russian missile hit a residential area in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, according to the state emergency services, wounding at least seven people. In Russia’s Voronezh region, authorities said four people were hurt in a separate Ukrainian drone strike.
As Moscow rebuffs repeated calls by the US president, Donald Trump, for a ceasefire, a Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv on Thursday killed 31 people, including five children, and wounded more than 150 in one of the worst single-day tolls in several months.
