According to local officials, an educational facility within a beloved seafront park in Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea in Ukraine, was struck by Russian missiles on Monday, resulting in the deaths of at least five individuals and injuring 32 others. Oleh Kiper, the regional governor, conveyed via the Telegram messaging app that aside from those directly affected by the attack, one individual also succumbed to a fatal stroke believed to be caused by the strike.
He said eight of the injured were in serious condition, including a 4-year-old child and a pregnant woman. Reuters television footage showed the roof of the ornate building – a private law academy – all but destroyed after the strike. Firefighters were directing water on small fires still burning at the site.
The ornate Gothic-style building—nicknamed locally as a ‘Harry Potter castle’ for its turrets—is a well-known landmark on Odesa’s seaside. It was built in the 1940s by wealthy merchants and prominent politicians. It now houses the Odesa Law Academy, which a former member of parliament runs. Its destruction was a blow to the city, already battered by Russian forces in an ongoing invasion that has sparked global condemnation from NATO and other allies of Ukraine.
Kiper said the attack was carried out using an Iskander-M ballistic missile armed with a cluster warhead, which is more challenging to intercept than the standard version. The missile was launched from a human-crewed aircraft flying at an altitude of about 10 miles, he added. The Ukrainian military has said that a total of 18 Iskander-M missiles have been fired at Odesa this week, killing two civilians and injuring dozens.
Russia has been accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine by the West, which says it is deliberately targeting civilians and buildings, including hospitals, schools and homes. It denies the charges.
Odesa has become a center of protests over the conflict, as residents decry a lack of government aid for the battered city and deteriorating living conditions caused by the war in eastern Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the city, which has been bombarded for months by Russian-backed rebels and their allies.
In another development, the Duchess of Edinburgh visited Kyiv on Tuesday to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and hear about their efforts to build a more unified country. Sophie, 59, praised the Ukrainian people for their resilience in the face of a Russian onslaught and championed those who had survived conflict-related sexual violence.
She was joined by Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan, whose department is responsible for helping to deliver aid and supplies to Ukraine. They discussed the continuing need for faster deliveries of desperately needed weapons for Ukraine’s depleted and outgunned troops, Buckingham Palace said.
In a sign of international solidarity, the princess visited a shelter in Kharkiv for displaced families, where she met some of the more than 2,000 women and children who have been forced to flee their homes because of the shelling. She also met an ill 98-year-old woman who walked a long way under shelling to reach the hospital, where she was treated for wounds.