Two dead in Russian ‘double tap’ attack on town near Ukraine’s Kharkiv

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(Reuters) -Russian forces launched a “double tap” missile attack on Saturday on a small town near Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, killing two people, an emergency services official and a police officer, officials said.

Officials also reported four dead in a series of attacks in Donetsk region to the southeast and two more in southern Kherson region.

Prosecutors said the mid-afternoon missile attack targeted the railway station in Budy, southwest of Kharkiv. After rescue teams arrived, a second missile hit the area.

They said 25 people were injured in the incidents, including two children.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said the head of the Kharkiv district emergency services was killed, along with a police officer from a rapid reaction unit. Among the injured were three emergency workers, a policeman and about 20 civilians.

Reuters could not verify independently the accounts and Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians. But Russian forces have used the “double tap” tactic to devastating effect.

Kharkiv remained out of Russian hands in the initial advance of the Kremlin’s forces after the February 2022 invasion.

The city and surrounding area have since come under constant attack, though Ukrainian officials say the frequency has diminished since U.S. supplies of weaponry to Ukraine resumed after a break of several months.

Donetsk regional governor Vadym Filashkin said an attack by multiple rocket launchers hit a multi-storey apartment building killed one person in Chasiv Yar — a town targeted by Russian forces as a staging point in advancing through Ukraine’s east.

A guided bomb, increasingly used in Russian attacks, killed one person near the town of Kurakhove, where some of the heaviest fighting is taking place along the 1,000-km (600-mile) front.

Two bombs dropped on a village further west near the town of Komar killed two people. Ten buildings and a shop were damaged.

In southern Kherson region, regional governor Oleksander Prokudin said Russian shelling had killed a couple in a village outside the main administrative centre, also known as Kherson.

Prokudin said Russian forces had shelled Ukrainian-held positions throughout the day. Russian forces seized Kherson region in the early days of the 2022 invasion, but Ukrainian forces recaptured many areas later in the year.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksander KozhukharEditing by Nick Zieminski, Deepa Babington and Franklin Paul)