Politics
Russia attacks Ukraine energy facilities, kills three people
- Zelenskiy urges more sanctions on Russia for energy attacks.
- Naftogaz reports damage to gas facilities.
- Several Ukrainian cities using generators for power and water.
Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles in overnight attacks on Ukraine, killing at least three people and damaging large energy infrastructure facilities in three regions, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had launched more than 450 drones and 45 missiles.
Two people were killed and 12 wounded in the city of Dnipro when a drone hit an apartment building. One person was killed in the Kharkiv region, regional officials said.
Energy facilities in the Kyiv, Poltava and Kharkiv regions were damaged, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
State-owned energy company Tsentrenergo said the attacks were the largest on its facilities since the start of the war in February 2022, and that it had halted operations at its plants in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions.
“The last strike was not even a month ago and the enemy has now struck all our generating capacity at the same time. The stations are on fire!” Tsentrenergo, which generates about 8% of Ukraine’s power, said in a statement.
“Our generation is now zero.”
Zelenskiy calls for more sanctions
Zelenskiy said sanctions pressure should be intensified.
“… for every Moscow strike on energy infrastructure – aimed at harming ordinary people before winter – there must be a sanctions response targeting all Russian energy, with no exceptions,” he said on the Telegram app.
Since the start of its invasion almost four years ago, Russia has made a point of attacking the power sector as the need for heating grows. This autumn it has attacked gas facilities nine times within two months, according to the state firm Naftogaz.
Moscow’s Defence Ministry said it had launched “a massive strike with high-precision long-range air, ground and sea-based weapons” on weapon production and energy facilities in response to Kyiv’s strikes on Russia.
Russia also said its forces continued to advance in grinding battles around the towns of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk, and had captured a tiny village in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine regularly sends drones to strike oil facilities inside Russia.
As diplomatic peace efforts have faltered, Kyiv is trying to reduce Moscow’s ability to finance its war.
The Ukrainian air force said 406 Russian drones and nine missiles had been shot down, and 26 Russian missiles and 52 drones had hit 25 sites.
Svyrydenko said the government and energy companies were working to restoredamaged electricity, water and heating provision.
In the Poltava region, two cities – Kremenchuk with a population of about 200,000 people and Horishni Plavni with 50,000 – lost most of their electricity and were using generators to provide water, city officials said.
- Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter jet crashes during training.
- Jet went missing after taking off from Jorhat airbase.
- Dead pilots identified as Sq Ldr Anuj, Flight Lieutenant Duragkar.
Two pilots from the Indian Air Force (IAF) were killed after a Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter jet crashed in India’s northeastern state of Assam, NDTV reported, citing officials.
The Indian Air Force said on Friday that a fighter jet, which was on a training mission, crashed in the northeast Indian state of Assam.
“The Su-30MKI, which was on a training mission, crashed in the area of Karbi Anglong, Assam, approx 60 km from Jorhat,” the Indian Air Force said on X.
The aircraft had gone missing shortly after taking off from the Jorhat airbase. Communication with the Russian-origin fighter jet was lost at 7:42pm, according to officials.
The crash occurred in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district, around 60 kilometres from the airbase. The aircraft reportedly went down in a remote hilly area.
The IAF identified the deceased pilots as Squadron Leader Anuj and Flight Lieutenant Purvesh Duragkar.
“All personnel of the IAF express sincere condolences, and stand firmly with the bereaved family in this time of grief,” the Air Force said in a post on X.
Local residents in the area said they heard a loud explosion from a nearby hill and saw a ball of fire shortly afterwards.
India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said he was “deeply saddened” by the loss of the two pilots in the “tragic” crash.
The Sukhoi Su-30MKI is a two-seater, long-range fighter aircraft developed by Russian manufacturer Sukhoi. It is produced under licence in India by state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for the IAF.
The aircraft was first inducted into the Indian Air Force in 1997, and the service currently operates a fleet of more than 260 Su-30MKI jets.
Similar incidents have occurred in recent years. A Sukhoi fighter jet crashed in Nashik, Maharashtra, in June 2024, while another Su-30 aircraft crashed in January 2023 shortly after taking off from the Gwalior airbase in Madhya Pradesh.
TEHRAN: The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, has said that recent US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran have damaged more than 3,000 civilian properties, according to reports cited by Al Jazeera.
Kolivand stated that the strikes affected 3,643 civilian locations, including 3,090 residential homes, highlighting the significant impact on populated urban areas.
Civilian Infrastructure Hit
According to the Red Crescent chief, the attacks also caused damage to several public and service facilities, including:
528 commercial and service centres
14 healthcare and pharmaceutical facilities
9 Red Crescent sites
Officials said the majority of the destruction occurred in densely populated residential areas, raising humanitarian concerns.
Growing Humanitarian Impact
The latest figures underscore the expanding civilian toll as the conflict involving Iran, the United States, and Israel continues to intensify.
Emergency teams from the Iranian Red Crescent are currently involved in rescue, relief and medical operations in affected areas.
Authorities have not yet released updated casualty figures but say humanitarian agencies are continuing to assess the full extent of the damage.
- Hegseth acknowledges US military was investigating incident.
- Press Secy Leavitt says Iran continues to targets civilians, children.
- Rubio says US would not deliberately target a school.
US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed scores of children on Saturday but have not yet reached a final conclusion or completed their investigation, two US officials told Reuters.
Reuters was unable to determine more details about the investigation, including what evidence contributed to the tentative assessment, what type of munition was used, who was responsible or why the US might have struck the school.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday acknowledged the US military was investigating the incident.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, did not rule out the possibility that new evidence could emerge that absolves the US of responsibility and points to another responsible party in the incident.
Reuters could not determine how much longer the investigation would last or what evidence US investigators are seeking before the assessment can be completed.
The White House did not directly comment on the investigation, but press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Reuters, “While the Department of War is currently investigating this matter, the Iranian regime targets civilians and children, not the United States of America.”
Asked about the incident during a news briefing on Wednesday, Hegseth said: “We’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets. But we’re taking a look and investigating that.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that the United States would not deliberately target a school.
“The Department of War would be investigating that if that was our strike, and I would refer your question to them,” Rubio said.
Israeli and US forces have until now divided their attacks in Iran both geographically and by target type, a senior Israeli official and a source with direct knowledge of the joint planning said. While Israel was striking missile launch sites in western Iran, the United States was attacking such targets, as well as naval ones, in the south.
The UN human rights office, without saying who it believed was responsible for the strike on the school, called on Tuesday for an investigation.
“The onus is on the forces that carried out the attack to investigate it,” UN human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a press briefing in Geneva.
Images of the girls’ funeral on Tuesday were shown on Iranian state television. Their small coffins were draped with Iranian flags and passed from a truck across a large crowd towards the grave site.
Deliberately attacking a school, hospital, or any other civilian structure would likely be a war crime under international humanitarian law.
If a US role were to be confirmed, the strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the Middle East.
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