Authorities in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian city of Kherson have closed the city’s only bridge across the Dnipro river after it came under fire from US-supplied high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS), an official from the Russian-installed administration said on Wednesday .
The Antonivskyi bridge has been closed for civilians but its structural integrity has not suffered from the shelling, Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-imposed Kherson administration, told Interfax.
“Traffic on the bridge is blocked. Indeed, another HIMARS strike was launched during the night,” Stremousov said in remarks shared on his Telegram channel.
“We have provided for all things like this, and in fact there are several ferry crossings,” he added.
He told TASS news agency that a railway bridge upstream had also been damaged by missile strikes but that repair works were underway.
A local resident who gave his name as Kostya told Reuters that he heard loud bangs and bright flashes as the projectiles hit the bridge between 10 and 11pm (1900-2000GMT) on Tuesday night .
“The Ukrainians won’t rest until they’ve finished it – it seems they managed to do it,” he said, adding that the bridge had been hard to damage as it had been built during Soviet times when, in his opinion, construction standards were superior to those seen today.
Another local resident, Mykola, said that the bridge is an inseparable part of the city of Kherson, and remarked that there was no traffic moving along the bridge on Wednesday.
