A Russian missile strike on Odessa killed at least 16 people and injured 55 others, Ukrainian authorities said Friday, the latest in a series of deadly airstrikes on the southern Ukrainian port city.

The Ukrainian State Emergency Services said an initial rocket hit several houses late in the morning, prompting rescuers to rush to the scene. A second rocket then landed at the same spot, killing many, including at least one paramedic and a rescue worker. The reports could not be independently verified.

Oleh Kiper, the governor of the Odessa region, posted photos on social media in which rescue workers evacuate one of their colleagues on a stretcher and try to extinguish a fire near a destroyed building. a photo released by the Odesa City Council showed what appeared to be a rescuer lying on the grass, his lifeless body covered by a foil blanket.

Ukrainian authorities said the attacks destroyed a three-story building, damaged 10 houses and a gas pipeline and caused a fire that spread to an area of ​​about 1,300 square meters.

It was the third deadly attack on Odessa in two weeks, killing at least 33 people in total. It came as Russians began voting in presidential elections that President Vladimir V. Putin would almost certainly win, and as his country’s war in Ukraine had entered its third year and showed no signs of abating.

On the same day, Russian authorities said Ukrainian shelling of the western city of Belgorod, close to Ukraine, had killed one civilian and wounded two others. Their claims could not be independently verified.

The attack on Odesa appeared to be what military officials call a “double-tap attack,” hitting the same target twice with a time gap between the two attacks, to kill emergency workers or firefighters responding to the first attack. Russian forces have previously used this tactic in Ukraine and Syria.

Natalia Humeniuk, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian army in the south, said The attack involved ballistic missiles fired from Crimea, the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula.

A lifeline for the Ukrainian economy, Odesa is home to an extensive port infrastructure that is crucial for Ukrainian exports to the Black Sea. Many ships depart from the port to ship grain and other agricultural products across the Black Sea.

The city, which Putin has long claimed belongs to Russia, was relatively unaffected by the fighting at the start of the war. But over the past six months, Russia has targeted grain silos and naval infrastructure there with drones and missiles in an attempt to undermine Ukraine’s relatively successful export operations in the Black Sea.

The attacks have also caused civilian casualties, either from direct attacks or from falling debris. Earlier this month, a drone hit a residential building, killing twelve civilians. It took rescuers several days to pull the bodies from the rubble, including those of babies and children.

And last week a rocket hit the city while President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece were visiting, killing five people. Mr. Zelensky later told an Italian television station that the rocket was less than half a mile from where he stood with Mr. Mitsotakis.

“I don’t know who this hit was aimed at,” Mr. Zelensky said, adding that it was “incredible” that Russia could attack the city while state leaders were visiting. The attack drew widespread condemnation from foreign leaders.

A Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Odessa took place on Wednesday while President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece were visiting the strategic port city.

Neither was injured and it appeared they continued their visit. It is unclear whether the Russian military specifically targeted them and how close they were to the explosion.

Mr Mitsotakis told reporters in Odessa that he and Mr Zelensky were visiting a port at the time of the attack. “We heard the sound of sirens and explosions very close to us,” he said Sulspine, a public broadcaster. “We didn’t have time to go to a shelter.”

Mr. Zelensky said the attack had left “dead and wounded,” but he did not elaborate.

Dmytro Pletenchuck, a spokesman for the Ukrainian navy, said Russia had hit port infrastructure in the city and five people had been killed.

Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker who was in Odesa at the time of the attack, said the attack took place around 10:40 a.m. local time. “I heard explosions, I was very close to the port,” he said in a text message. “It was very loud.”

It was not immediately clear what weapons Russia used, but the Ukrainian air force reported the possible use of ballistic missiles.

Russia said his army had launched “a high-precision missile attack on a hangar in the industrial port area of ​​Odesa at around 10:40 a.m. local time, where preparations were being made for the combat use of unmanned boats of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

Odesa, home to extensive port infrastructure crucial to Ukraine’s Black Sea exports, has been regularly targeted by Russia over the past six months. Last week a drone hit a residential building, killing twelve civilians. It took rescuers several days to pull the bodies from the rubble, including those of a baby and two children.

Mr Zelensky and Mr Mitsotakis visited the site of last week’s attack on Wednesday to pay tribute to the victims, and went to a cathedral heavily damaged by a previous Russian missile attack.

Mr Zelensky said in a video on social media that he discussed air defense capabilities with Mr Mitsotakis in Odessa. “Weapons are needed here to save human lives,” he said. “Decisions are needed now – not sometime in the future – for the people who face terrorist attacks every day and every night.”

The civilian toll is rising in Odessa, the Ukrainian port city that was relentlessly attacked by Russian forces last week after the Kremlin pulled out of an agreement that allowed the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.

One person has been killed and 22 others, including four children, have been injured in Russian missile attacks on Odessa. Ukrainian officials report this. At least six residential buildings were damaged, as well as an Orthodox cathedral where rescuers recovered an icon from the rubble dedicated to the city’s patron saint.

“There can be no excuse for Russian evil,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said of the attacks in a Telegram post on Sunday, adding, “There will certainly be retaliation.”

With its busy port, Odessa has long been a crucial economic link for Ukraine to the rest of the world economy. Although the city had been subject to attacks earlier in the war, there was a fleeting sense of normalcy as it had been shipping agricultural products for almost a year despite a wartime blockade by Russia.

But that came to an end last week, after Russia announced it would end its participation in the Black Sea grain deal, an agreement that had helped stabilize food prices around the world. Moscow has said the pact was in favor of Ukraine.

In recent days, Russia has launched some of its most furious attacks on Odessa, destroying grain that could have fed tens of thousands of people for a year. The attacks also killed at least one other civilian and injured at least two others. The Kremlin has threatened more hostilities and says it will treat any ships sailing around Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea as military targets.

The The cathedral is Odessa’s largest Orthodox cathedral and has remained aligned with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is supported by Moscow, despite the move by many parishes in Ukraine to join a branch loyal to Kiev in the wake of last year’s full-scale invasion by Russia.

Erected in 1794, the building, also known as the Transfiguration Cathedral, became the main church in Novorossiya, the name the Russian Empire gave to the lands along the Black Sea and Crimea, which are part of present-day Ukraine. It was destroyed during a Soviet campaign against religion in 1936 and was not rebuilt until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

In 2010, Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, dedicated the newly rebuilt cathedral, a sign of the close ties between the church and Moscow. Twelve years later, after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kirill “blessed” the war effort, saying the sins of the Russians fighting in Ukraine would be “washed away.”

There was no immediate response from the Patriarch or the Kremlin to the damage to the cathedral on Sunday.

Russia’s defense ministry said it attacked military infrastructure in Odessa and blamed the damage to the cathedral on “actions” by Ukrainian air defense teams.

On Saturday, Mr Zelensky warned of the dire consequences of Russian actions in the Black Sea.

“Any destabilization in this region and the disruption of our export routes will mean problems with associated consequences for everyone in the world,” he said in his nocturnal address. Food prices could rise, he said.

The grain deal, struck between the United Nations and Turkey about a year ago, helped stabilize food prices around the world. But now Russia’s withdrawal from the deal could again threaten food security in several countries already reeling from multiple crises, especially in the Horn of Africa.

Mr Zelensky is calling for more help from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. After meeting on Saturday with the alliance’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, Mr Zelensky said the Ukraine-NATO Council, a new body that hopes to deepen the alliance between Ukraine and its allies, will soon hold a meeting on the situation in Odessa and the Black Sea.

Also on Sunday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia met with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus in St. Petersburg, the Belarusian state news agency reported. It was one of the first public meetings between the two leaders since Lukashenko negotiated an end to the brief mutiny of the Russian mercenary group Wagner last month. The two allies would discuss security, bilateral relations and other issues, the news agency reported.

Last summer, the beaches around the port city of Odessa in southern Ukraine were littered with volunteers packing sandbags under cliffs where troops were positioned in machine gun nests as the threat of a Russian amphibious assault still loomed.

This summer should have been different. In the first days of June, the sun was warm, the Black Sea shimmering blue, and despite an official swimming ban, many Ukrainians were already packing the beaches.

Then the Kakhovka dam was destroyed.

It unleashed a deluge of water that poured down the Dnipro River, engulfing towns and villages in southern Ukraine. Thousands of homes and businesses were inundated, vast fertile farmlands were ravaged, and the full environmental and economic costs are likely to be measured for years to come.

The floods also brought mounds of debris to the Black Sea – bits of buildings, trees, appliances, boats, cattle carcasses and even instruments of war, such as the land mines that both Russian and Ukrainian troops had planted near the river. Now the tides carry much of it to the coast, along with a stew of toxic chemicals polluting the famed beaches of Odessa and other coastal communities.

“The sea is turning into a rubbish dump and animal cemetery,” the Ukrainian border guard warned last week. “The consequences of ecocide are terrible.”

It said there was a “plague of dead fish” among the houses and furniture, mines and ammunition that washed ashore. On Saturday stated the Odessa City Council that swimming was banned on all beaches in the city, calling it “dangerous to the health of citizens”.

Before the dam broke on June 6, city officials were busy installing protective nets in the water to catch floating sea mines, such as the nets that protect swimmers in other parts of the world from sharks. But there is no system in place that can stem the deluge of debris now hitting shorelines, emergency and military officials said.

In recent days, mines from the Dnipro have washed up in Odessa, more than 100 miles away, the local branch of the State Emergency Service said. One was found by a resident who thought it was a bottle of cooking gas and picked it up. Somehow it didn’t explode.

“He brought it home, but luckily common sense won out and he called the mine clearers,” the agency said.

The destruction of the dam could mean another summer cut off from the sea, a bitter blow to a city already suffering from intermittent Russian missile strikes and the loss of its port, with all but a few grain ships destroyed by a Russian blockade prevented from sailing.

Igor Oks, creative director of a new international cultural center in Odessa, said that the city without a port is like a body without limbs. Not being able to enjoy the sea, he said, is like cutting out one’s heart.

He remembered the scene a year ago, amid fears of a Russian landing, when the beaches were prepared for battle, marked by trenches and steel girders welded into tank traps.

“There were bags of sand everywhere and volunteers came to the beach every day to fill these bags,” he said. “I remember going to the beach and watching the level of the sand drop like a foot or five feet.”

City officials estimate that 700 tons of sand had been excavated from beaches during the early months of the war when the alarm was at its peak.

At that time, Odessa was still facing a Russian threat from land, air and sea. Now the Kremlin’s land forces have been pushed back and the warships are keeping a wary distance as improved Ukrainian coastal defenses have put them in danger.

But the dam’s destruction has brought new dangers, threatening to dampen a resurgence of life and commerce in a city that has long been a favored escape route for people across Ukraine.

With President Vladimir V. Putin’s hopes of taking the city seemingly far out of reach, the citizens of Odes sought to recover some of the summer excitement that helped the city earn its reputation as ‘the pearl of the Black Sea’ .

Once a small outpost of the Ottoman Empire, it was conquered by Russia in the 1790s, refounded and renamed by Empress Catherine the Great, and grew into a prosperous port and seaside resort, known for its beaches and elegant architecture.

In early June, ballerinas from a dance school held a class on a boardwalk in the morning, an open-air cinema was set up for a summer film festival in the evening, and music poured from the cafes all day long.

The famous Potemkin Stairs – 192 steps leading from the city to the harbor – have been closed off, as the harbor remains a target of Russian attacks, but most of the checkpoints around the city have disappeared. The restaurants and bars are busy, and before the dam broke, workers were cleaning the sand on the beaches, not digging it up.

Now they must keep pace with a deluge of often dangerous debris.

Mykola Kaskov, 47, head of the rescue-diving unit of the state emergency service in the Odessa region, said that even before the dam broke, naval mines detaching from their moorings posed a continuing risk. But his mission remains the same.

“The most important thing is to keep people alive,” he said.

Last summer there was a swimming ban, but several people died on the beaches due to mines. A 50-year-old man who took to the water in search of sea snails, an Odesan delicacy, was blown up last June when his family watched from shore.

A month later, a young man went swimming and “was blown up by a mine on his birthday,” said Serhii Bratchuk, spokesman for the Odessa military administration. said at the time.

That danger is now much greater, warned the Ukrainian military southern command.

Yevhen Koretskyi, 24, a demining specialist for the state emergency service in the Odessa region, has been training on a new underwater drone designed to search for explosives. They received the new equipment just days before the dam burst, but are already commissioning it.

He demonstrated the equipment in an empty marina on the outskirts of the city and said he and his colleagues would soon be using such devices to help protect swimmers in the sea, as well as in recently flooded rivers and lakes.

Viktor Butenko, 41, a rescue diver, was testing another nearby device that should be used if they were running late.

“This catamaran drone is for searching for bodies,” he said.

Before the dam’s destruction, many residents of Odes said they were ready to dip their toes back in the water despite the dangers, though some more cautiously than others.

Olena, 40, who was on the beach with her 7-year-old son in early June, said she was “gradually” approaching the sea.

“I first came to the sea walk,” she said, referring to the cobbled path behind the sand. “Then to the beach, and finally tried the sea.”

“I haven’t had a bath yet, too cold for me, but my son goes in the water,” she added. “Of course we are afraid of the mines, but it is time for summer holidays and it would be too sad without the sea.”

Now there are more mines and also other threats. The sea, officials said, is once again too dangerous to enter and it looks like another beach summer could be lost in the war.

Anna Lukanova And Evelina Riabenko reporting contributed.