Latest updates on Russian missile strike killed 18 in Kryvyi Rih
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Apr 6, 2025
Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of firing ballistic missiles to target residential neighbourhoods in the central city of Kryvyi Rih on Friday. The attacks claimed the lives of 18 people and injured dozens more. France24 correspondent Gulliver Cragg reports the latest from Kryvyi Rih.
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Moving on now to Ukraine, the mayor of Kiev says the city is under missile attack and paramedics have been sent to two districts
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There have been explosions and falling wreckage, while elsewhere in Ukraine, air raid alerts were issued for Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odessa
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It comes two days after one of Russia's deadliest recent strikes on Vladimir Zelensky's hometown, Krivy Rigg
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And that's where our correspondent Gulliver Crag is waiting to talk to us
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Gulliver, what's the latest on these strikes on the capital, first off? So it was ballistic missiles that hit Kiev around about 5 a.m. local time
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Ballistic missiles take only a few minutes to fly from Russian territory to the Ukrainian capital
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So far, in terms of damage, I've heard about three people being wounded
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two of them hospitalised, non-residential buildings being damaged. I've seen a couple of photos. They look to me like office buildings
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but I don't know exactly what they were. There were fires in at least two districts of the Ukrainian capital At least eight cars were damaged But we haven heard about any deaths or large numbers of casualties But perhaps it too early to be sure if there
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aren't going to be more reports of damage due to this attack on Kiev. It wasn't only
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Kiev that was targeted, though. At about the same time as the ballistic missiles hit the
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capital, the Ukrainian air force was warning about cruise missiles, which take longer to
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fly to Ukraine. They seem to have been launched from somewhere near the Caspian Sea, flying
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towards the country. And eventually the air alert went off across the whole of Ukraine
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and several regions are reported to be targeted. But we don't yet have any information about
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whether those strikes were shot down, whether they hit their targets. Of course, if they
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were military or industrial targets, we may never hear about it. But perhaps it's just
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too early to say whether or not there are any civilian casualties as a result of this
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attack, but it certainly was a massive attack across the whole country. Something else that
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will be interesting to look out for is whether or not energy infrastructure was targeted. In the past
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Russian large strikes of this type using large numbers of cruise missiles have almost always targeted power stations and other elements of Ukraine electricity grid Now theoretically a ceasefire is in place and they shouldn be targeting those kinds of things
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So we'll see later in the day whether or not they did. Gulliver, Krivy Rig, where you are, that was the site of a gruesome attack on Friday
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How has that affected public opinion there? well i mean there's outrage as well as great sadness across ukraine because of the number
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of children who died nine children and the reason is clear the strike hit a children's playground
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which you can see behind me you can see people have bought flowers cuddly toys as they always do
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when children are killed in these attacks also i think you can perhaps see that the buildings in a
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very wide radius have had windows smashed they've now been boarded up it's actually in front of me
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what you can't see that is the restaurant that according to the Russian version of events was the main target
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The Russians say that there was a high level meeting of Ukrainian and foreign military top brass happening in this restaurant
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The Ukrainians deny that any such meeting was taking place Of course we can be sure whether or not that true But what we can be sure of is that the weapon used was cluster munitions They are designed to kill as many
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people as possible across a very wide radius. So this absolutely does not look like a precision
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strike aimed at minimising the number of civilian casualties on the country. And that's why there
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is such great anger, not only directed at the Russians in Ukraine, but also at the Americans
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for their reaction. Bridget Brink, the US ambassador, whilst statements were coming in
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from around the world condemning the Russians for this attack, she only said this is why this war
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has to end without singling out that this was a Russian attack. And that has been roundly condemned
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in Ukraine, including by the President Volodymyr Zelensky himself. Though he also said in his
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statement that he hoped, despite everything, that Donald Trump's promise to look into helping
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Ukraine reinforce its air defences, that he would actually come good on that promise
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because clearly more air defences are needed. Gulliver, thank you as always for being there on the spot for us this Sunday morning
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I appreciate it
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