Ukrainian strikes on parts of the Russian-held Lugansk and Kherson regions killed 26 people and injured dozens more on Friday, occupation authorities said.

Both Ukrainian regions were among four Russia claimed to have annexed in September 2022 despite not fully controlling any of them following the full-scale military campaign launched that February.

A shop in the village of Sadove in the southern Kherson region “with a large number of visitors and employees was destroyed,” Vladimir Saldo, head of Russian occupation authorities in Kherson, wrote on Telegram.

A HIMARS missile struck shortly afterwards as residents from neighboring houses rushed to help the victims, Saldo told Russian media, putting the overall toll at 22 dead and 15 injured.

Saldo condemned the “vile murder of civilians” made possible by Western arms deliveries to Ukraine.

Earlier on Friday, Russian-appointed officials in Lugansk reported that a Ukrainian missile strike on an apartment block in the eastern region’s main city of the same name killed four and wounded more than 40.

Lugansk city came under a “massive” missile attack on Friday morning, according to Leonid Pasechnik, the Russia-appointed head of the region almost entirely under Moscow’s control.

A section of an apartment block collapsed and the “bodies of four peaceful civilians killed were removed from the rubble,” the Moscow-backed region’s government said on Telegram.

“Forty-six people have received medical treatment,” said regional health minister Nataliya Pashchenko, adding that they included an eight-year-old boy and three teenage boys.

The condition of 10 of the injured is “grave,” she said.

The strike tore open the facade of a five-storey Soviet-era block of flats from the roof down and left a deep crater in the ground, images posted by the Russian emergency services showed.