Ukrainian officials now say at least 30 people were killed and 88 wounded in a Russian missile attack that hit a convoy of civilian vehicles near the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya on September 30.
Ukrainian police chief Ihor Klymenko reported the new death toll on social media.
"30 dead and 88 wounded as a result of another Russian war crime in Zaporizhzhya," he wrote. "Among the dead are two children: an 11-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. A [3-year-old] girl was also injured."
Klymenko added that among the dead was a policeman -- a 36-year-old employee of the local Strategic Investigations Department. Another 27 police officers of the Berdyansk district administration were injured, and four of them were in serious condition, he said.
Zaporizhzhya is one of the four Ukrainian regions partially occupied by Moscow that were officially seized when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees in a ceremony on September 30 after a referendum rejected as a sham by Ukraine, the United States, and the United Nations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of terrorism.
"Only complete terrorists could do this," Zelenskiy said in reaction to the strike. "Bloodthirsty scum! You will definitely answer," he added.
Zaporizhzhya Governor Oleksandr Starukh said the rockets were launched at a civilian convoy leaving the city center.
The attack occurred as people were waiting in cars to cross into Russian-occupied territory so they could retrieve family members and bring them back across the front lines, said the deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
But Kremlin-backed regional chief Vladimir Rogov blamed the attack on Ukraine, accusing Kyiv of carrying out a "terrorist act."
"The regime in Kyiv is trying to portray what happened as shelling by Russian troops, resorting to a heinous provocation," he said on social media.
Ukraine's air force said Mykolayiv and the Black Sea port city of Odesa were also targeted again with Iranian-supplied suicide drones that Russia has increasingly deployed in recent weeks, seemingly to avoid losing more pilots who don't have control of Ukraine's skies.
In Mykolayiv, a Russian missile struck a high-rise building and wounded eight people, said the regional head, Vitaliy Kim.
Meanwhile, the Moscow-backed head of the separatist administration in the eastern Donetsk region said on September 30 that the Russian stronghold of Lyman, in the region's north, was "semi-encircled" by the Ukrainian Army and that news from the front was "alarming."
In a message posted on Telegram, Denis Pushilin, administrator of the territory that calls itself the Donetsk People's Republic, said the villages of Yampil and Drobysheve near Lyman "are no longer fully controlled by us."
