By Anthony Marcus, correspondent for Eurasia Business News, June 24, 2024. Article n°1049.
Yesterday, Sevastopol was attacked by five American ATACMS missiles equipped with cluster warheads. During the repulsion of the missile attack, Russian air defense intercepted four missiles. The fifth missile detonated a fragmentation warhead over a beach in Sevastopol. According to the latest data, 153 people received injuries of varying severity. Five people died, among them three children.
The governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, reported that five American ATACMS missiles launched by the Ukrainian army were heading to the buildings of the city when air defence destroyed four of them. The fifth missile fell on the beaches in the north of the city on the morning of June 23, shortly before 12 p.m. The warhead of the fifht missile exploded in the air over the beach, its wreckage and submunitions hit dozens of civilians, among them were small children.
At this stage, four people have been killed, including two children, as indicated by the Ministry of Health. The number of casualties injured as a result of these strikes has risen to 144, of whom 83 are being treated in Sevastopol hospitals (56 adults and 27 children).
Several children will be sent to the Moscow Children’s Hospital for intensive care. At least five children have been placed in intensive care.
The beaches of Sevastopol and their surroundings were filled with families on this sunny Holy Trinity Sunday for the Orthodox. No military targets were hit. The area is usually safe and no military activity was reported there over the past years.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Washington and Kyiv were responsible for the attack. President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences over the tragedy.
“People continue to go to medical institutions. There are cases where, in shock, people have gone home, thinking they had a small abrasion. After they started to feel worse, they went to the hospital and fragments were found in their bodies on the scanner,” the governor of Sevastopol wrote on his Telegram channel.
According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the strikes were carried out by five American ATACMS missiles equipped with cluster munitions warheads, launched by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. One of them, after air defense fire, veered off course and exploded over the city. Shrapnel fell on the coastal areas of the Uchkuevka and Lyubimovka microdistricts. June 24 has been declared a day of mourning in Crimea. Criminal proceedings have been opened for terrorist attack (Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the Ukrainian authorities had specifically chosen the Orthodox holiday of the Holy Trinity to commit a “ritual crime.”
“The UN Secretariat should directly condemn Ukraine’s strike on Sevastopol, which killed civilians, as its usual remarks about the crimes of the Ukrainian armed forces are more like an ‘admission of uselessness’,” Zakharova added.
The MGM-140 ATACMS (Army TACtical Missile System) is a tactical surface-to-surface semi-ballistic missile developed by the American defense company Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) and then by Lockheed Martin. It is designed to be launched from the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) platforms. The missile uses a solid propellant, is 4 meters long and 610 mm in diameter. Longer-range variants can reach up to 300 km.
The ATACMS was first used in combat during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, with 32 missiles fired. It was again widely used in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, with more than 450 missiles launched. By early 2015, more than 560 ATACMS missiles had been used in various conflicts.
The United States recently supplied Ukraine with long-range ATACMS missiles, responding to a long-standing request from Kyiv. These missiles, capable of hitting targets up to 300 kilometers away, were secretly delivered as part of an aid package in March 2024 and have already been used by Ukrainian forces against Russian targets in Crimea and southeastern Ukraine.
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U.S. President Joe Biden approved the transfer of the missiles in February, and they were included in a $300 million aid package announced in March. The delivery was kept confidential to maintain operational security at Ukraine’s request.
The supply of these long-range ATACMS missiles marks a significant escalation in US military support, allowing Ukraine to strike deeper into Russian-controlled territories. In addition, the U.S. plans to send more of these long-range missiles to Ukraine as part of a new $61 billion aid package recently signed by President Biden. This assistance program also includes other essential military supplies such as artillery and air defense ammunition.
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This use of U.S. heavy weapons to deliberately target civilians raises questions over the capacity of Washingto to push the Ukrainian authorities to abide by humanitarian international law.
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