Three killed in Russian attacks in southern Ukraine - local officials

[June 23, 2023]  KYIV (Reuters) - At least three people were killed in Russian attacks in southern Ukraine on Tuesday, including two who died after a trolleybus company came under fire in the city of Kherson, regional officials said.  

An agricultural worker operates a tractor as smoke rises in the distance after a military strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kherson region, Ukraine June 20, 2023. REUTERS/Andrii Dubchak/File Photo

Oleksandr Prokudin, the governor of the Kherson region, said two men aged 55 and 43 were killed by "targeted fire" on the Kherson trolleybus company in what he described as "another Russian terrorist attack".

Several other people were injured, he said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Prokudin posted photographs from the scene online, with one showing what appeared to be a dead man in the foreground and two trolleybuses in the background. The prosecutor's office said the attack took place around 10.20 a.m. Kyiv time (0720 GMT) and that it had launched an investigation.

Yuriy Malashko, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, wrote on Telegram that a 35-year-old man had been killed in a Russian artillery barrage on the village of Mala Tokmachka and that four people had been wounded elsewhere in the region.

Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, denies targeting civilians.

Russian forces have continued shelling Kherson from positions they hold in the wider Kherson region despite flooding caused by the destruction of the Khakovka dam, which lies upstream from the city on the Dnipro River.

Kyiv has reported making advances in southern Ukraine in a counterattack against the Russian forces, and both sides have reported heavy fighting in parts of the south.

(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka and Kyiv newsroom, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

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