Ukrainian officials said a Russian airstrike on Monday evening killed five people and wounded about 30 others in Odesa, a southern Ukrainian city that has been a regular target of Russian missiles and drones trying to destroy its port infrastructure.
Videos and photos showed lifeless and bloodied bodies of civilians lying on a seafront promenade not known to be close to any strategic site like military buildings or grain storehouses.
Ukrainian authorities on Tuesday accused Russia of using cluster munitions — a controversial and widely banned weapon that can often cause indiscriminate harm to civilians — in the attack.
Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, said in a statement that Russia had fired an Iskander ballistic missile with a cluster warhead. “The investigators have a reason to believe that the decision to use such a weapon was taken by the Russian military officers deliberately to kill as many Ukrainian civilians as possible,” Mr. Kostin said.
His claim could not be independently verified.The statement included a video of the attack, which showed that the assault targeted a port area with several sports facilities nearby. The video also shows a constellation of some 30 explosions in quick succession across the port neighborhood. The New York Times verified the authenticity of the video but not the nature of the weapon used.
Minutes before the explosions, Ukraine sent a warning via a Telegram channel of a missile launch from Crimea headed toward Odesa.
