© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Commander of the Ground Forces colonel general Oleksandr Syrskyi reports to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at a position near the front line, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine June 26, 2023. Ukrainian Preside
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KYIV (Reuters) -Russia’s military pressed on with fierce assaults on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka on Saturday, with shelling so fierce that emergency crews were unable to recover the dead from wrecked buildings, the town’s top administrative official said.
It was the fifth straight day of assaults on the town in Ukraine’s industrial heartland of Donbas, focal point of Moscow’s 19-month-old invasion of its neighbour.
Both Russia and the United States have described the upsurge in violence around Avdiivka as a new Russian offensive.
Fighting intensified in other sectors of the 1,000-km-long (600-mile) front, with a top Ukrainian commander saying clashes further north had “significantly worsened” in recent days.
Vitaliy Barabash, head of Avdiivka’s military administration, said residents had experienced a rare overnight respite from air strikes, but attacks had resumed at daybreak.
“They are striking with everything they have. Bouts of shooting, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, mortars and a lot of aircraft,” Barabash told national television.
All rescue operations had been halted, he said, amid reports of people believed to be trapped under rubble of buildings levelled by shelling and air strikes.
“Operations cannot take place in such conditions. It is frightening to leave because the road is under fire. And no easier to stay as there is no place, no basement that can withstand the strikes.”
Barabash said 1,620 residents remained in Avdiivka, a town with a large coking plant and a pre-war population of 32,000.
The town, 20 km (12 miles) west of the Russian-held town of Donetsk, has become a watchword for resistance. It held off attacks in 2014 when Russian-backed separatists seized areas of eastern Ukraine and has undergone serious fortification since.
A four-month-old Ukrainian counteroffensive has made some progress in both the east, near the shattered city of Bakhmut, taken by Russian troops in May, and in the south, where Kyiv hopes to reach the Sea of Azov. But gains have been incremental.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, visited troops near Kupiansk further north and said Russian forces had regrouped after suffering losses and were attacking around the village of Makiivka and towards Kupiansk.
“The main objective of the enemy is the defeat of a grouping of our troops, the encirclement of Kupiansk and to reach the Oskil River,” a military platform quoted him as saying.
Syrskyi said Russian forces conducted “dozens” of assaults each day, but that Ukrainian troops were holding their ground.
A four-month-old Ukrainian counteroffensive has made some progress in the east, near Bakhmut, and in the south, where Kyiv hopes to reach the Sea of Azov, but gains have been incremental.
The governor of the southern region of Kherson said a woman had died in the Russian shelling of the town of Beryslav and explosions were reported later in the city of Kherson.
