At least 7 dead and 58 injured in Putin’s terrifying Christmas Eve rocket attack in market as tyrant ‘kills for pleasure’

At least seven people were killed and another 58 injured after Russian missiles blew up a boosy market in Kherson on Christmas Eve.

Volodymyr Zelensky shared horrific photos of streets littered with burning cars, smashed windows and dead bodies, and slammed Russia for “killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”

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The President of Ukraine said: “Social networks will most likely mark these photos as ‘sensitive content’.

“But this is not sensitive content, it is real life of Ukraine and Ukrainians.

“These aren’t military installations… it’s terror, it’s killing for the purpose of intimidation and pleasure.”

On the day that marked 10 months into the war in Ukraine, shells rained down on the bustling Christmas Eve market in the southern port city, igniting a huge, huge bonfire.

Rescuers comforted a distraught man next to a lifeless woman while bloodied bodies littered the street.

The footage showed the streets full of burned-out cars, dead bodies and broken glass after rockets rained down on the city.

“Seven people were killed, 58 residents of Kherson were injured, 18 of them are in serious condition,” regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said.

Despite Russia’s withdrawal from the city, Kherson remains within reach of Moscow’s guns and under constant threat.

Ukraine retook the city — the only regional capital to be captured by Russia since the February 24 invasion — in November.

Since then, Russian troops have smashed the city with rockets fired from across the vast Dnipro River.

Yuriy Sobolevskyi, deputy chairman of the Kherson regional council, said a rocket landed next to a supermarket on the city’s Freedom Square.

“There were civilians there, each with their own lives and their own businesses,” he said.

Two senior officials put the death toll in Kherson at seven – but the Attorney General’s Office gave a higher figure of eight.

Presidential adviser Kyrylo Tymoshenko said the attack came from a Grad multiple rocket launcher.

“While families in Europe, North America and beyond prepare celebratory dinners, don’t forget about Ukraine fighting evil,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

Among the victims was a butcher named Lesha, who worked at the market “maybe for 20 years or more,” said resident Oleksandr Kudryashov.

“He came out to smoke, he was standing right here. We pulled his body away, he was already dead,” Kudryashov told AFP, pointing to a bloody staircase.

On Friday alone, the Kherson region was hit by 74 Russian attacks, with five dead and 17 wounded, according to regional authorities.

Much of Ukraine is struggling without heat or power after Moscow began targeting power and water systems nearly two months ago.

The UN human rights chief has warned that the campaign has inflicted “extreme hardship” on Ukrainians this winter – and has also criticized likely war crimes by Russian forces.