Death toll rises to 12 in attack on student dormitory in Ukraine

The death toll from a drone attack on a student dormitory in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine has risen to 12, Russian state news agency RIA reported on Saturday (23), citing the emergency ministry.

Russia on Friday accused Ukraine of what it described as a deliberate drone attack on the city of Starobilsk, with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordering his military to prepare options for retaliation.

Leonid Pasechnik, head of the Russian administration in the region, published a preliminary list containing details of 11 victims, most of them girls aged 19.

Nine people remained trapped under the rubble, state news agency TASS reported.

Ukraine's military denied responsibility for the attack, saying it had struck an elite drone commando unit in the area and that its forces complied with international humanitarian law.

Disputed region
Ukraine is fighting to recover Luhansk, an area that together with Donetsk is part of Donbass, one of the four regions that Moscow unilaterally claimed in 2022, in an action that Kiev classified as an illegal land grab.

Yana Lantratova, Russia's Human Rights Commissioner, said 86 teenagers, aged between 14 and 18, were sleeping in the Starobilsk student accommodation at Luhansk Pedagogical University when they were attacked by Ukrainian drones.

"The Ukrainian armed forces carried out a targeted attack on sleeping children," Lantratova said in a statement.

President Volodymyr Zelensky promised retribution last week after laying red roses on the rubble of a residential building in Kiev, where a Russian missile attack killed 24 people, including three children.

Source: CNN