Video Shows Fire Rain From Sky After Russian 'Incendiary Ammunition' Strike

A video that has gone viral reportedly shows the moments when a village in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region was hit by Russian incendiary munitions.

"A peaceful Ukrainian village, shelled by Russian incendiary ammunition," says the message next to a video tweeted by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry on Saturday.

By Saturday afternoon there had been more than 131,000 views of the undated clip lasting just under two minutes, which showed a series of explosions lighting up the night sky in the settlement, which was not named.

"Not a single Ukrainian military facility in sight," added the tweet, referring to Moscow's repeated claims that it only aims for military targets, although Ukrainian energy and civilian infrastructure has been battered by a barrage of Russian rockets for weeks.

"This is a violation of Protocol III of the CCW Convention and a pathetic attempt at revenge by the losers," added the message, without specifying what the attack intended to avenge, nor what kind of incendiary weapons were allegedly used.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.

The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which Russia is bound by, prohibits or restricts the use of certain conventional weapons which are considered excessively injurious or whose effects are indiscriminate.

Under the convention, an "incendiary weapon" is one that is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury "through the action of flame...produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target."

The convention's third protocol says it is "prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects the object of attack by incendiary weapons." It also prohibits "in all circumstances" targeting a military site using air-delivered incendiary weapons "within a concentration of civilians."

In a joint statement with more than three dozen countries including the EU, and the U.K, the U.S. said last November it was "gravely concerned" about reports that Russia was failing to comply with its obligations under the CCW in its invasion of Ukraine.

In November, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice Beth Van Schaack accused Russia of carrying out "systemic" war crimes since the start of the invasion on February 24, citing evidence gathered by nongovernmental organizations, the media and investigators.

Meanwhile, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan has said that the ICC was able to prosecute Russia for the crime of "aggression" in Ukraine.

Saturday has seen reports of further Russian missile attacks across Ukraine. On Saturday, energy infrastructure in the Industrialnyi district of Kharkiv city was hit by two S-300 missiles fired by Russia, according to local officials.

Kyiv's mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, said rocket fragments had fallen in Kyiv's Holosivskyi district, on the western bank of the river, although there were no casualties.

The governor of the central Cherkasy region has urged residents to heed air raid sirens, warning that Russia could launch a massive missile strike later on Saturday.