Russian rockets fired on east Ukraine town kill 5 in humanitarian support centre, says Kyiv

Russian missiles struck a humanitarian support centre in an eastern Ukraine town early Friday, killing five people, emergency services said.

“The town of Kostyantynivka came under rocket fire during the night of March 24. One of the rockets hit a single-storey building,” the emergency services said on Telegram.

Of those killed, three were women and two were men, the services informed. The latest attack comes as Moscow’s forces push to capture the industrial Donetsk region.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops are preparing to launch a counterattack as Russia’s offensive begins to falter, a commander said. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that without a faster supply of arms the war could last years.

The Ukrainian military said early on Friday that 1,020 Russian troops had been killed over the previous 24 hours. Moscow’s troops had launched unsuccessful attacks on the towns of Lyman, Avdiivka, Mariinka, and Shakhtarske, the military said. But their main focus was still the mining town of Bakhmut.

“The enemy has not stopped its assault of Bakhmut,” Ukraine’s General Staff said in a report.