KYIV – Russian missiles pounded Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa on March 15, killing more than a dozen people, including rescue workers, in an attack Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described as “vile”.

AFP journalists on the scene saw bodies covered by blankets strewn on the street, while images from officials showed exhausted emergency service workers smeared with blood and dirt dousing flames and treating wounded colleagues.

The local authorities said Russian aerial bombardments struck residential buildings, ambulances and a gas pipeline, leaving at least 20 people dead and wounding another 73, including rescuers.

Ms Maria Slyzovska, who witnessed the attack, said the first strike rocked her mother’s home, leaving “everything broken” before the second missile hit.

“There were a lot of people there. There was blood and ambulances. We all live in the realities of this Russian roulette,” she said.

Mr Zelensky said Russian forces had launched a type of attack known as a double-tap strike on the port hub, with the second projectile ploughing into rescue workers at the scene.

City officials said Moscow targeted Odesa with Iskander missiles launched from the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

“Russian terror in Odesa is a sign of weakness of the enemy, which is fighting Ukrainian civilians at a time when it cannot guarantee security for people on its own territory,” said presidential aide Andriy Yermak.

In response, Ukraine on March 16 hit back at Russia with fresh bombardments, killing two people and prompting the authorities to close schools and shopping centres in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine.

The governor of Belgorod, Mr Vyacheslav Gladkov, said air defence systems had downed eight Ukrainian missiles, but two residents were killed and others injured.

“A man was driving a lorry when a shell hit him, after which the vehicle crashed into a passenger bus.

“The people on it were not injured,” Mr Gladkov wrote on social media.

“Another woman was killed in a carpark where she and her son came to feed the dogs. Medics are fighting for her son’s life,” he added.

Unverified images of the attack circulating on social media showed a large blast destroying a car and sending debris into the air.

In a separate post, Mr Gladkov announced that schools and shopping centres in the city of Belgorod and some surrounding districts would close temporarily over the coming days, the second time in March.

Mr Putin vowed a harsh response to the assaults, saying on March 16 in televised comments that the spate of aerial and ground assaults by Kyiv’s forces “will not go unpunished”.

Earlier in March, Mr Zelensky and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came under missile attack in Odesa, when Russia said it was targeting military facilities at the city’s port.

That bombardment came just days after a dozen people – including five children – were killed when a Russian drone hit an apartment block in Odesa, in one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in weeks.

The March 15 attack was just the latest in a series of fatal barrages between Kyiv and Moscow, as polls opened across Russia.

Kyiv said that a Russian drone strike killed two people in the central Ukrainian region of Vinnytsia, and that shelling on the front-line Zaporizhzhia region killed one woman.

National police said Russia had attacked the Vinnytsia region, more than 400km from the front lines, with drones, leaving a 52-year-old man and his 53-year-old wife dead.

In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, which Moscow claims to have annexed and partially controls, a 76-year-old woman was killed when fragments of a Russian shell hit her in her garden, said the Ukrainian governor, Mr Ivan Fedorov.

‘Trying to break through’

Moscow-installed officials in the Russian-held city of Donetsk, meanwhile, said that a “barbaric” Ukrainian attack on a residential area had killed three children.

“Three children died. A girl born in 2007, a girl born in 2021, and a boy born in 2014,” Mr Alexey Kulemzin, the Russian-appointed mayor of occupied Donetsk, wrote on Telegram.

Russia also said Ukraine launched drone and artillery attacks on areas closer to the countries’ shared border.

The uptick in attacks on Russia’s border regions come after its forces in February captured the city of Avdiivka, just a few kilometres north of Donetsk.

It said pushing Ukrainian forces back would help protect residents of areas under its control from shelling.

The head of Ukraine’s army said on March 15 that Russia had launched a wave of attacks to try to advance further in the area.

“The enemy has concentrated its main efforts and has been trying to break through... for several days in a row,” Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said in a statement after visiting front lines around Avdiivka. AFP