Tochka-U Missile Fragment Kills 23 People Including Children In Donetsk, Ukraine Denies Carrying Out Attack

Illustration of Ukrainian Tochka-U missile. (Wikimedia Commons/VoidWanderer)

JAKARTA - Ukraine's military has denied launching a missile attack on the separatist-held city of Donetsk, after Russia's Defense Ministry said 23 civilians were killed in a Ukrainian missile attack.

Russian authorities also said the Tochka-U missile used in the attack had also wounded 28 people in the eastern Ukrainian city, in what it described as a "war crime".

Earlier on Monday, a local separatist leader had told Russian news agency TASS the Tochka-U missile had been intercepted over the rebel stronghold, but parts of it had landed in the city center.

The leader of the Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushilin, said that as a result, residential areas were damaged.

"People are queuing near ATMs and standing at bus stops," he told the Rossiya 24 network, as quoted by Al Jazeera March 15.

"There are children among the dead," added Pushilin.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian military authorities were quick to deny the allegations of the attack.

"This is clearly a Russian rocket or other ammunition, there's no point in even talking about it," Ukrainian military spokesman Leonid Matyukhin told a televised news conference.

Asked about reports of the Ukrainian attack in Donetsk, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a tragedy.

Both the death toll and the incident could not be independently verified. Meanwhile, the region has been controlled by pro-Russian rebels since 2014.

Reports of the attack come as Ukrainian and Russian negotiators meet for the fourth round of talks since Russia invaded its neighbor on February 24. The conversation ended after several hours without a breakthrough.

It is known, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the goal of the war in Ukraine, which he called a special military operation, was the demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian government.

He claimed Kyiv had committed genocide against the Russian-speaking population of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, collectively known as the Donbas, where the Ukrainian army has been fighting Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Ukraine denies the allegations.