Three people were killed and 10 wounded on Sunday when Russian forces bombed a boat carrying evacuees from the flooded Ukrainian-controlled territory of Kherson, the regional governor and presidential administration officials said, Reuters reported.

“The army of the Russian Federation attacked a boat with civilians who were evacuating from the left bank of the Kherson region,” the head of the President’s Office, Andriy Yermak, reported on Telegram, writes “Ukrainian Pravda”.

The injured were hospitalized in the medical department.

“Doctors are fighting for the lives of the wounded,” Yermak says.

A 74-year-old man protected a woman with his own body

“Three civilians were killed, ten more (persons) were injured, including two law enforcement officers,” said the governor of the Kherson region Oleksandr Prokudin.

In a statement on Telegram, he said the 74-year-old man used his body to shield the woman from Russian fire, was shot in the back and died.

Prokudin’s statement does not specify how the Russian forces attacked the boat.

The area suffered catastrophic flooding after the collapse of the Novaya Kakhovka dam, and Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of undermining it.

On June 11, Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko announced that 2,718 civilians had been evacuated from flooded areas. He also reported on five dead as a result of the flood in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions and 35 missing persons, including seven children, Kyiv Independent reports.