Russian jet drone strike on Lutsk kills six and injures 12 in western Ukraine

Strike on a Lutsk wholesale store

A Russian drone attack on Lutsk, the capital of Volyn oblast in western Ukraine, killed six people and injured 12, according to figures the Ukrainian Interior Ministry gave to AFP. A jet-propelled drone hit a wholesale food store on Konyakina Street, and a fire spread through the building. Rescuers recovered five of the dead from the rubble of the Eurogurt warehouse, and a sixth person died in hospital, regional governor Roman Romaniuk said. Witnesses told Ukrainian media that people had no time to reach shelters after the air alarm sounded. Most of the dead and injured were staff or customers of the store.

Debris and the blast wave also damaged a nine-storey residential building nearby, where two people were injured, one of them a child.

Now there are 6 dead: five people were found in the rubble, and one person died in hospital.

Shifting early figures and earlier attacks

Early reports gave a lower toll. Regional police first cited four dead and 10 injured, before Romaniuk reported six dead. The Interior Ministry's total, given to AFP, is 12 injured. The city had already been targeted on 13 October, when Russian forces attacked it with jet-propelled Shahed drones. Debris from one downed drone fell on the Adrenalin City entertainment centre, and no one was hurt.

Lutsk and Volyn oblast have been attacked by Russian forces at least 15 times since the full-scale invasion began in 2022. The most deadly earlier attack was on a military airfield on 11 March 2022, which killed four servicemen. A missile strike on an SKF plant on 15 August 2023 killed three civilian workers.

Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia

The same day brought deadly attacks on Kyiv. Kyiv police said five people were killed and 36 injured, while the State Emergency Service had earlier reported three deaths in the capital. Russian troops also attacked residential areas of Zaporizhzhia on 14 October, targeting several streets in the Voznesenivskyi district, where there were casualties and several buildings were damaged.

Washington and Starlink

A senior Ukrainian official accused the United States of helping Russia. The official said Washington had not warned Kyiv about the imminent attacks and had slowed Starlink, the satellite system Kyiv relies on for communications and logistics. The articles do not record a response from Washington.