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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Ryan Merrifield

Clumsy Russian tank repair crew accidentally fires shell at family home injuring child

A clumsy Russian tank repair crew accidentally fired a shell which travelled nearly five miles and struck a family home, it has been claimed.

The alleged incident in the annexed Crimea peninsula is said to have seen a young girl taken to hospital.

A video shows a pile of rubble behind a broken area of fencing off a rural road.

Russian Telegram channel Baza reports the house is on Sadovaya Street, in Dzhankoy.

It says the girl was an 11-year-old called Diana who suffered a laceration to her forearm.

Describing the incident, the military insider channel said: "In Crimea, a tank was being repaired and accidentally fired – the shell flew eight kilometres and hit the wall of a private house.

A video shows a home partially destroyed after the alleged accidental strike (@ChrisO_wiki/Twitter)
A young girl is said to have been injured (@ChrisO_wiki/Twitter)

"A girl was injured. The tank was being repaired in the village of Novostepnoye.

"During repair works there was an unintentional shot.

"The shell hit the house located on Sadovaya Street in Dzhankoy.

"At that moment, 11-year-old Diana was there - the girl received a laceration to her forearm and was hospitalised."

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of civilian troops last month in an effort to turn the tide of his stuttering Ukraine invasion.

The alleged incident happened on Sadovaya Street in Dzhankoy (@ChrisO_wiki/Twitter)

US estimates suggest Moscow is losing around 500 soldiers per day to injury or death.

The new recruits are said to be being sent to the frontlines ill-equipped and without proper training, only to be met with plucky defending troops armed with NATO weapons and intelligence.

It comes after the Kerch Bridge, connecting Russia to Crimea, was damaged in an explosion on Saturday.

In retaliation, Putin ordered the relentless bombing of multiple Ukrainian cities, including capital Kyiv, killing at least 26 people.

It is Moscow's biggest aerial offensive since the start of the invasion in February.

Black smoke billows from a fire on the Kerch bridge that links Crimea to Russia (AFP via Getty Images)

Putin described the bombing as a "terrorist act".

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has today detained five Russians and three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia over the explosion.

The FSB said the attack was orchestrated by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry, and its director Kyrylo Budanov.

Crimea, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, had been gifted to Ukraine by Soviet Russia.

In 2014 Russians seized control, before organising an illegal referendum supporting Russian annexation, but most countries recognise Crimea as Ukrainian.

Russian State Duma deputies applaud during the voting on annexation of four Ukrainian regions (Getty Images)

Last month despot Putin also illegally annexed four further Ukrainian regions and vowed to use "all the power and all the means" at his disposal to defend them.

Hastily staged referendums saw Moscow's proxies in the occupied regions claim majorities of up to 99% in favour of joining Russia.

These were Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.

Ukraine and Western governments described those votes as bogus, illegitimate and conducted at gunpoint.

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