(Reuters) -A Ukrainian drone attack on a resort area of the Crimea peninsula killed three people and injured 16, the area’s top official said, in an attack denounced by Moscow.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea, seized and annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014, gave the toll from the town of Faros in a Telegram post.
The Russian Defence Ministry said: “At about 19.30 Moscow time (1630 GMT) in the resort area of Crimea where there are no military targets whatsoever, the Ukrainian armed forces launched a terrorist strike using strike drones equipped with high-explosive payloads.”
The ministry described the incident as a “premeditated terrorist attack on a civilian target”.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced the incident as “yet another act of terrorism by the Kyiv regime.
“And NATO and the European Union, when seeking the aggressor on the European continent, need to look into the mirror to see this,” she told the TASS news agency.
“They are the ones driving destabilisation and the spread of terrorism in Europe by virtue of their sponsorship of the Kyiv regime and as supplier of arms to it.”
Ukrainian officials issued no comment on the incident and Reuters could not independently verify the report.
Aksyonov had earlier said that a school in the town was also damaged and falling drone debris sparked fires on open ground near Yalta along Crimea’s southern shore.
Mikhail Rozvozhayev, governor of Sevastopol, the home port of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, wrote on Telegram that anti-aircraft units had downed three drones in the area.
Russia annexed and incorporated Crimea into its territory in 2014 in the aftermath of a popular uprising in Kyiv that prompted a Russia-friendly president to flee Ukraine.
Subtropical Crimea has been a popular holiday area since Soviet times for both tourists and the Soviet and the elite.
Krymsky Veter, an independent website devoted to Crimean affairs, said senior officials were likely staying in the region’s guest houses.
Foros gained international notoriety in 1991 when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was briefly detained at a government dacha, or country house, during a shortlived attempt by hardliners to unseat him.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
