A Russian missile hits a Liberia-flagged ship in Odesa, Ukraine’s main Black Sea port

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian port of Odesa hit a Liberian-flagged freighter, killing a port worker and injuring three citizens of the Philippines, who are crew members on the ship, Ukraine’s armed forces said Thursday.

The report did not give the name of the ship or the country of its owners, but Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the ship was to carry iron ore to China. The extent of the damage was not immediately reported.

Another port worker was injured in the attack along with the one killed.

The Odesa port and others in the region are economically vital to Ukraine as its outlets to the Black Sea, from which ships can head for world markets. Odesa port facilities have come under Russian attack 21 times since Russia in August declined to renew a deal allowing Ukraine to safely export grain via the Black Sea, Kubrakov said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in October that a new Black Sea export corridor had allowed some 50 ships to set sail.

Three other civilians were killed in Russian attacks over the past day, according to a summary from the presidential office.

In the Donetsk region, the Russian army shelled 11 towns and villages, killing two people in Toretsk and wounding one civilian in Chasiv Yar. In the neighboring Kharkiv region near Izium, a man was killed during artillery shelling.

In the south, one civilian was wounded during shelling of residential areas of Kherson, and another was wounded by a mine. In the area of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Russians shelled Nikopol on the opposite bank of the Dnieper River, wounding a person and damaging infrastructure, power lines and fourteen houses.