Russia and Ukraine blame each other.
Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for a rocket attack that killed several Ukrainian prisoners of war in the occupied part of the Donetsk region.
Ukraine says the prison was targeted by Russia in an attempt to destroy evidence of torture and killings. For its part, Russia said that the prison camp in Olenivka was hit by a Ukrainian precision missile.
Unverified Russian footage of the aftermath shows a jumble of collapsed beds and badly burned bodies. An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky said the scene looked like arson and that a rocket attack would have dispersed the bodies.
Those arrested are said to include members of the Azov battalion, who were the last defenders of Mariupol and whom Russia has sought to describe as neo-Nazis and war criminals.
Ukraine’s new Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said he had opened a war crimes investigation into the explosion. His office added that it believed around 40 people were killed in the attack and 130 were injured.
Daniil Bezsonov, a spokesman for the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, said the attack had been a “direct hit on a barracks holding prisoners” and the death toll could rise.
The Russian defense ministry said the attack was carried out with US-made Himars artillery and accused Ukraine of a “deliberate” provocation. The ministry produced fragments of what it said were missiles fired by the Himars system.
