The death toll from a Ukrainian drone strike on a vocational school dormitory in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region has risen to 18, authorities said on Saturday.
Additional bodies had been recovered from the rubble of the building in the town of Starobilsk, Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said. A total of 48 people were reported injured.
Local authorities said three people were still missing and that rescue teams were continuing to search through the debris. Authorities have repeatedly revised upward the death toll following Friday's attack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused the Ukrainian military of carrying out a “terrorist attack.”
Putin launched Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and subsequently annexed the eastern Luhansk region, which Kiev is seeking to retake from Russian occupation.
Ukraine’s General Staff accused Moscow of spreading disinformation, saying a Russian military unit specializing in drone attacks against Ukraine had been operating in Starobilsk and had been the intended target of the strike.
Putin claimed there had been no military target.
UN Secretary General António Guterres criticized the attack.
"We strongly condemn any attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, wherever they occur," a spokesman for the UN chief said in New York on Friday.
Both sides in the war regularly claim to target only military objectives. Nevertheless, civilians continue to be killed and injured and civilian infrastructure destroyed on both sides.
Civilian losses caused by Russian attacks in Ukraine, however, are many times higher.
