Local authorities reported Monday that three people were killed and two more were injured when a mine exploded on a beach in Ukraine.
Footage shows beach-goers being fatally maimed as they swam Saturday at a beach in Zatoka in Ukraine’s Odesa region, where millions of residents and tourists alike spend summer vacations along the Black Sea.
Three victims were pulled out of the water “without any life signs,” Odesa police Col. Lyubov Hordievska said. Two more victims were taken to hospital. Their conditions were not immediately known.
“We would like to emphasize once again on the dangers of swimming in the water of Odesa region,” Hordievska said. “It is dangerous and forbidden.”
Paramedics took one victim’s body to the beach and carried it on a stretcher. Video shows that police tape was used to secure the area.
Odesa’s military forces closed beaches in the port city in February due to the threat of possible airstrikes by Russian forces, the Kyiv Post reported.
During the February invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops also left mines along the Black Sea coast. They later turned up along the coast and at least five people had been killed by mines prior to Saturday’s blast, the outlet reported.
Last week, the US State Department announced that it would provide $89 million for Ukraine to remove landmines. Nearly 100 teams will be sent to the war-torn region to find and safely dispose off the devices.
“Russia’s unlawful and unprovoked further invasion of Ukraine has littered massive swaths of the country with landmines, unexploded ordnance, and improvised explosive devices,” the State Department said Tuesday. “The grotesque use of improvised explosive devices in the manner that we are seeing in Ukraine by Russian actors was previously only associated with ISIS in Syria.”
Ukrainian officials estimate more than 61,000 square miles — or roughly the combined size of Virginia, Maryland and Connecticut — may be contaminated with mines, according to the State Department.
With Post wires
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