Russian bombing kills three in Kherson

Kyiv: Russian shelling killed three adult members of a family in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson on Sunday, regional authorities said.

Four others -- including two children -- were injured when a shell flew into the yard of a house in the village of Burgunka, officials said. “The Russian occupiers killed a family in the region of Kherson,” the regional administration said in a statement.

“Three people died at the scene of the tragedy -- the father, mother and uncle.” Separately, an 8-year-old boy was injured by the shelling in the same village, the regional authorities said. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of four Ukrainian regions including Kherson. In November, Moscow ordered its troops to withdraw from the city of Kherson in a humiliating defeat for the Russian army.

In Russia, the governor of the border region of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said a young woman was killed by Ukrainian shelling in the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka. Meanwhile, France said it will begin delivering the armoured vehicles it has promised Ukraine in its war against Russia by next weekend.

The vehicles, of the AMX-10 type and sometimes described as “light tanks”, are used for armed reconnaissance and attacks on enemy tanks. The first vehicles will be sent to Ukraine “by the end of next week”, Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu told Le Parisien newspaper’s Sunday edition. He declined to specify the number of vehicles in the first batch, saying he did not want to give Russia any “strategic information”.

According to the French defence ministry, AMX-10s are highly mobile, “powerfully armed” and offer protection against light infantry fire. Their combat weight is 20 tonnes, around a third of that of France´s Leclerc battle tanks.

The French armed forces have begun to replace AMX-10s, first developed in the 1970s, with more modern vehicles called Jaguar. President Emmanuel Macron promised in early January that France would send AMX-10s, after months of hesitation because of fears that increased weapons deliveries could further escalate the conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. Training of Ukrainian crews on the AMX-10 was now “nearly complete”, Lecornu said.