Poisonous Black Rain Linked to Oil Fires Falls in Russia

Ukraine is intensifying drone strikes on Russian oil facilities, hitting a key Black Sea refinery four times in two weeks and setting off a days-long carcinogenic blaze that environmentalists say represents one of the country's worst ecological disasters since the fall of the Soviet Union.

A plume of black acrid smoke once again rose over Russia's Black Sea city of Tuapse on Friday after Ukraine struck the refinery and oil terminal there overnight, the fourth in a spate of attacks that have also caused oily droplets of "black rain" to fall on residents and contaminated more than 30 miles of coastline as an oil slick spread.

Firefighters have battled for days to extinguish major fires at the refinery and storage facilities since the first strike, on April 16, only to see the fires reignited by repeated drone attacks.

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