Two women have died after a Russian missile struck a village school in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Friday, Ukrainian police have said.
A 56-year-old primary school teacher and a chief accountant, 44, died in the strike on a school in the village of Serhiivka.
Ukraine’s national police said that a further six people were injured in the attack, which investigators believe was caused by an Iskander missile.
Twelve employees were the building's only occupants, the prosecutor's office said. Ukrainian schools were not in session for students on Friday.
“Russian troops, in a direct hit, destroyed a school where civilians were located,” Ukraine's national police said in a statement.
Four men, aged 54 to 69, and two women aged 24 and 34 were injured and taken to hospital, according to the Donetsk region prosecutor’s office.
A video shared by police showed a motionless, bloodied person being lifted into an ambulance, and a woman being extracted from extensive ruins.
Groups of men, including civilians and emergency workers, were continuing to comb the ruins for survivors on Friday.
It came hours after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered top military commanders to strengthen Ukraine's northern military sector following the arrival of Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in Belarus.
Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner forces, flew from Russia into exile in Belarus on Tuesday under a deal negotiated by President Alexander Lukashenko that ended his “mutiny” in Russia on Saturday.
Reports have suggested that Wagner could set up a new base at a vacant military facility near the town of Asipovichi, about 90 km from the Belarusian capital, Minsk.
Separately, Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar on Friday said that Ukrainian troops were continuing to advance in all directions of their counteroffensive.
“If we talk about the entire frontline, both east and south, we have seized the strategic initiative and are advancing in all directions,” she told Ukrainian television.
Ms Maliar said Ukrainian troops were moving “confidently” on the flanks around the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which is held by Russian forces, and the main fighting was going on around the city.
In the south, Kyiv's forces were moving with mixed success and mainly levelling the frontline, she said.
“We are moving with varying success, sometimes there are days when it is more than a kilometre, sometimes less than a kilometre, sometimes up to 2 kilometres,” she said.
