by James Mackenzie
KYIV (Reuters) – Bombings hit a shopping center in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Sunday evening, killing at least eight people, damaging nearby buildings and spreading smoke and debris several hundred yards.
At daybreak on Monday, firefighters were at work to put out small flames and find any survivors in the Podil district.
Six corpses were extracted from the rubble by the emergency services. According to the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office, at least six people were killed.
The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said the area surrounding the mall served as an ammunition depot and a place to reload multiple rocket launchers.
“Long-range high-precision weapons destroyed a Ukrainian rocket launcher battery and an ammunition depot in a non-functional shopping center overnight,” Igor Konashenkov told reporters.
He provided no evidence to support this assertion, which was disputed by military experts.
While the Russian army has stepped up strikes against parts of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital’s defense forces have so far managed to prevent a large-scale assault similar to that in Mariupol or Kharkov, in the east from the country.
However, dozens of civilians have been killed in Kyiv since the start, on February 24, of what Moscow describes as a “special operation” in Ukraine.
(Reporting James Mackenzie, with Lidia Kelly, Ron Popeski and Pavel Polityuk; French version Myriam Rivet and Jean Terzian, editing by Bertrand Boucey and Tangi Salaün)
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