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 Russian air defenses. 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.