MOSCOW, May 31 (Reuters): Ukrainian shelling killed five people in a village in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, Moscow-installed officials said on Wednesday, while a drone attack caused a fire at an oil refinery in southern Russia.
Ukrainian artillery also hit a Russian town close to the border for the third time in a week, damaging buildings and vehicles and injuring four people, Russian officials said.
A day after the Kremlin accused Kyiv of sending drones to attack buildings in Moscow, Russian-installed officials in Luhansk said five people were killed and 19 wounded when Ukrainian forces used U.S.-made HIMARS rocket launchers to attack a farm in Karpaty village overnight.
Russian forces control nearly all of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian artillery also struck the Russian town of Shebekino about 7 km (4.5 miles) north of the border with Ukraine's Kharkiv region, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on the Telegram messaging app.
Two people were hospitalised and shells smashed windows and damaged roofs of an eight-storey apartment building, four homes, a school, he said.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports. There was no immediate response from Ukraine and both sides deny targeting civilians.
The governor of Russia's southern Krasnodar region said a drone was the likely cause of a fire that broke out at the Afipsky oil refinery.
The fire was put out and there were no casualties, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said on Telegram. The Afipsky refinery is not far from the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, near another refinery that has been attacked several times this month.
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