Seven people including a 23-day-old baby girl were killed in Russian shelling in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Sunday, the country’s internal affairs ministry said.
Artillery shelling in the village of Shiroka Balka, on the banks of the Dnipro River, killed a family – a husband, wife, 12-year-old boy and the 23-day-old girl – and another resident.
Two men were killed in the neighbouring village of Stanislav, where a woman was also wounded.
The attack on Kherson province followed Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar’s comments on Saturday attempting to quell rumours that Ukrainian forces had landed on the occupied left (east) bank of the Dnipro in the Kherson region.
“Again, the expert hype around the left bank in the Kherson region began. There are no reasons for excitement,” she said.
Kherson’s regional governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Sunday that three people had been wounded in Russian attacks on the province on Saturday.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian military officials said on Saturday evening that Kyiv’s forces had made progress in the south, claiming some success near a key village in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and capturing other unspecified territories.
Ukraine’s general staff said they had “partial success” around the tactically important Robotyne area in the Zaporizhzhia region, a Russian stronghold that Ukraine needs to retake in order to continue pushing south towards Melitopol.
“There are liberated territories. The defence forces are working,” Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of Ukraine’s southern forces, said of the southern front.
Battles in recent weeks have taken place on multiple points along the more than 1,000km (600mile) frontline as Ukraine wages a counteroffensive with western-supplied weapons and western-trained troops against the Russian forces who invaded nearly 18 months ago.
Ukrainian troops have made only incremental gains since launching a counteroffensive in early June.