Death Toll in Russian Strike in Zaporizhzhia Rises to 13

The death toll from a Russian missile strike on a residential building in Zaporizhzhia has risen to 13, including an eight-month-old baby.

A search operation has been ongoing since the attack on Thursday Mar. 2, with the number of known dead – initially only two – steadily rising over the weekend.

“Rescuers recovered 13 bodies of victims from under the rubble of the house, including that of an 8-month-old baby,” the Main Department of the Ukrainian State Emergency Service in the Zaporizhzhia region said in a post on Telegram.

The day after the attack, President Zelensky said: "The terrorist state wants to turn every day for our people into a day of terror. 

"But evil will not reign in our land. We will drive all the occupiers out and they will definitely be held accountable for everything.”

His comments came shortly before explosions lit up the night sky on Friday morning deep inside Russia near a town which is host for a high security Kremlin weapons research facility.

Russian national news agencies and local social media reported that two blasts shook the vicinity of Kolomna, home to the state-owned missile and aerospace research institute “Design Bureau of Machine Building (DBMB)”, about an hour’s drive from the Russian capital.

Among other advanced Kremlin weapons, DBMB is the lead state agency for designing and upgrading Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missile, a weapon the Kremlin has claimed is superior to anything NATO possesses. The research center is some 75 km south-east of Moscow and at least 500 km from the closest likely Ukrainian drone launch site.

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EXPLAINED: What We Know About Russia’s Oreshnik Missile Fired on Ukraine

Putin said it had been deployed "in a non-nuclear hypersonic configuration" and said that the "test" had been successful and had hit its target.

In January, a Russian strike on a tower block killed at least 45 people including six children in the central city of Dnipro.