A Ukrainian drone attack on a tourist area in the Crimean peninsula has killed three people and wounded 16, the region's top official said, and Moscow condemned the attack, Reuters reports.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea, which Russia seized and annexed from Ukraine in 2014, listed the death toll from the town of Foros in a post on Telegram.
The Russian Defense Ministry said: "At around 7:30 p.m. Moscow time (6:30 p.m. CET) in the tourist area of Crimea, where there are no military targets, the Armed Forces of Ukraine carried out a terrorist attack using strike drones equipped with powerful explosive warheads."
The ministry described the incident as a "premeditated terrorist attack on a civilian target."
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned the event as "another act of terrorism by the Kiev regime."
"And NATO and the European Union, when they are looking for an aggressor on the European continent, should look in the mirror to see him. They are the ones who are inciting destabilization and the spread of terrorism in Europe, given that they sponsor the Kiev regime and supply it with weapons," she told the TASS news agency.
Ukrainian officials have not commented on the incident, and Reuters could not independently confirm the report.
Aksyonov previously said that a school in the city was also damaged, and that falling drone debris caused fires in open ground near Yalta, along the southern coast of Crimea.
Mikhail Razvozhayev, governor of Sevastopol, the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, wrote on Telegram that anti-aircraft units had shot down three drones in the area.
Russia annexed and incorporated Crimea into its territory in 2014, following a popular uprising in Kiev that forced the pro-Russian president to flee Ukraine, according to Reuters.
Subtropical Crimea has been a popular tourist destination since Soviet times, both for ordinary visitors and for the Soviet and post-Soviet elite.
Krimski Veter, an independent portal dedicated to Crimean issues, said that high-ranking officials were likely staying in the residences in the area.
Foros came to the world's attention in 1991 when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was briefly held at the state dacha during a failed attempt by hardliners to oust him from power.
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
