Seven People Killed in Russian Attack on Kherson, Including a Baby: Ukraine Declares Monday a Day of Mourning

The impact of the Russian attack on Ukrainian territory (Wikimedia Commons/State Emergency Service of Ukraine)

JAKARTA - At least seven people died, including a 22-day-old baby, in a Russian attack in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine on Sunday, prompting the government to declare a day of mourning this Monday, while President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to uphold justice.

Kyiv recaptured parts of the Kherson region from Russian occupation last November, but Kremlin troops have continued to pound the regional capital and surrounding areas from across the Dnipro River.

Five people died in the village of Shyroka Balka, including a 22-day-old baby girl, her 12-year-old brother who died of serious injuries in hospital and their 39-year-old mother, Olesia, President Zelensky said.

"The terrorists will never stop killing civilians," Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote in a post on Telegram, reported by Reuters August 14.

"The terrorists must be stopped. By force. They don't understand anything else," he continued.

Two people, including the pastor of a church, were killed in the neighboring village of Stanislav, according to Governor Oleksandr Prokudin.

In addition, three people each in Kherson City and Beryslav City were injured, according to the interior ministry, and casualties were also reported in five other settlements across the region.

"Today the Kherson region shuddered from the terrible news. Kherson, Veletenske, Zolota Balka, Stanislav, Komyshany, Shyroka Balka..." Prokudin wrote on Telegram, listing the settlements hit by Sunday's attack.

Later that evening, the local Kherson government said airstrikes and artillery shelling had injured a 31-year-old woman and a man and damaged at least 12 houses in the town of Bilozerka.

In a post on Telegram, it was said that three aerial bombs had damaged several houses in the village of Odradokamianka.

Meanwhile, President Zelensky said, as of 18:00, there were 17 reports of shootings in the Kherson region alone on Sunday, as well as incidents in the Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donbas, Kharkiv regions and in the border area in northeastern Ukraine.

"There is not a day that Russia's crimes do not receive an entirely just response," he said in a nightly video speech.

He cited past Russian targets, including equipment, depots and the Kerch Bridge linking occupied Crimea with Russia, which his domestic intelligence agency recently admitted was sabotaged last October, as "evidence that we are not will leave Russia's crimes unanswered."

It is understood the Ukrainian military launched a counteroffensive in June to retake Russian-occupied territory in the southeast, but has not made any significant attempt to cross the Dnipro, to reach the other side of the Kherson region.