MOSCOW, January 1. /TASS/. The Ukrainian army carried out a drone attack on a cafe and a hotel in the village of Khorly in the Kherson Region, where civilians were celebrating the New Year, Governor Vladimir Saldo said.
According to preliminary reports, over 24 people, including a child, were killed, and another 29 people, among them five kids, suffered injuries.
TASS has collected the key information about the attack.
Drone strike
Saldo said that three Ukrainian drones had hit a cafe and a hotel in Khorly in the Black Sea coast village of Khorly, where civilians were celebrating the New Year.
The strike caused a fire that engulfed 500 square meters and was put out at 8:40 a.m. Moscow time (5:40 a.m. GMT), the governor’s spokesman Vladimir Vasilenko told TASS.
The Russian Investigative Committee launched a criminal investigation based on Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code ("Terrorist Attack"), committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said.
Casualties
As many as 29 people were taken to the hospital, among them children born in 2008, 2012, 2018, and 2019, Vasilenko specified.
Thirteen of those injured are hospitalized in Crimea and the Kherson Region. Six of them are in serious conciliation, Assistant Health Minister Alexey Kuznetsov told TASS.
Terrorist attack and Kiev regime’s agony
The Kherson region’s governor believes that "the terrorist attack on Khorly, which targeted defenseless women and children, is a sign of the Kiev regime’s agony."
"Many people were burned alive. A child was killed. In fact, the crime can be compared to what happened in Odessa’s Trade Union House," Saldo added, referring to the May 2, 2014 developments in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, where 48 people died in a fire set by radical nationalists.
Russian Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Chair Valentina Matviyehnko stressed that the drone attack on the Kherson Region was only strengthening Russia’s resolve to achieve the goals of its special military operation as soon as possible.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed out that "those who sponsor the bastard terrorists in Ukraine" were primarily to blame for the attack on civilians in the Kherson Region.
All countries "should make a proper legal and political assessment of this inhumane act" as "the killing of dozens of civilians cannot go unanswered," Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador-at-Large tasked with overseeing the Kiev regime’s crimes, emphasized.
The Kiev regime ordered the Ukrainian army to attack civilians in such a brutal manner to revenge on them for choosing to live in Russia, a country free of Nazism, and speak their native Russian language, Viktor Vodolatsky, first deputy chair of the Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament) Committee for CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, told TASS.
Mourning declaration
Kherson Region Governor Vladimir Saldo declared two days of mourning on January 2 and 3 in memory of the victims of the attack.