2023-10-12 12:02:33
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Romania said Thursday it has found the crater caused by a suspected drone that exploded when it landed on its territory near the border with Ukraine, reviving concerns that the Russian war in the neighboring country might reach the nation, which is part of NATO.
The discovery of the crater in the early morning, 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) west of Plauru, a town separated from the Ukrainian port of Izmail by the Danube River, came following the Romanian Defense Ministry said it detected a series of drones heading to Ukrainian river ports.
According to the ministry, the drone may have exploded on impact, but it was not immediately clear where or when it was launched. Authorities opened an investigation into the incident.
“The atrocious Russian attacks on Ukrainian civil infrastructure once once more have serious consequences on Romanian territory,” said Foreign Minister Luminita Odobescu on X, the social network known as Twitter. “New evidence of the impact on the ground has been found Romanian”.
“We call on Russia to put an end to these war crimes,” he added.
Separately, the governor of the Russian region of Belgorod, on the border with Ukraine, said Thursday that three people, including a minor, were killed and two others were injured overnight by the falling debris of a drone. regarding a private home, which caught fire.
The drone was shot down by Russian air defenses, but its remains “effectively destroyed” two houses on the outskirts of the city of Belgorod, the provincial capital, and caused damage to several others, said the governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov.
The Belgorod region has been a regular target of cross-border shelling and drone attacks. The Ukrainian authorities have never acknowledged responsibility for the incidents on Russian territory.
In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office reported that at least 10 civilians were killed and another 18 people were injured in the last 24 hours. Among the attacks on the last day, a missile hit a school in the city of Nikopol, in the south of the country, causing four deaths and two injuries. A total of 50 homes, infrastructure facilities and power lines were damaged in the city located on the banks of the Dnieper River.
The Ukrainian air force said it intercepted 28 of 33 Shaheed drones fired by Russia overnight across the country. Oleh Kiper, governor of the southern province of Odessa, where Izmail is located, said Russian troops attacked port infrastructure on the Danube, leaving one person injured.
The Ministry of the Interior in Kiev raised the official death toll in a missile attack that leveled a cafe in Hroza, Kharkiv, to 59 people last week following more victims were identified.
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Associated Press journalists Hanna Arhirova in kyiv, Ukraine; Karel Janicek in Prague and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
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