Kharkiv, Ukraine
Reuters
Russia unleashed new air strikes on Ukraine early on Friday, killing a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother in the city of Kharkiv and damaging grain and port infrastructure in the Odesa region in the south, Ukrainian officials said.
The boy and his grandmother were killed when Russia hit Ukraine’s second biggest city with two Iskander ballistic missiles, Regional Governor Oleh Synehubov said. Twenty-eight others were wounded, including an 11-month-old baby, he said.
Rescuers carry a bag with the body of 10-year-old boy Tymofii released from debris at a site of a residential building damaged by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on 6th October, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Vitalii Hnidyi
The boy’s father, Oleh Bychko, told Reuters he had managed to pull his younger son and wife out of the rubble after the strike. Bychko, his face scratched and his clothes covered in blood, stood shocked and lost for words after the death of his 10-year-old son, Tymofiy.
The missile attack destroyed much of a residential building, where rescue workers worked among the rubble of bricks, twisted metal and wood.
The attacks followed a Russian missile strike on Thursday in which Ukrainian officials said dozens of people were killed in the village of Hroza in north-eastern Ukraine during a gathering to mourn a fallen Ukrainian soldier.
The attack on Hroza was one of the deadliest single strikes on civilians since Russia’s invasion in February, 2022.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the response to what he referred to as “Russian terror” should be Ukraine’s resilience, “our movement, and the daily losses of the occupiers”.
A three-day mourning period was announced in the wider Kharkiv region as villagers cleared grave sites for their relatives and rescuers continued their work at the scene, looking for body parts among piles of bricks, wood and metal.
The Kremlin reiterated on Friday that it does not attack civilian targets, distancing itself from a strike that resulted in one of the biggest civilian death tolls of the more than 19-month-old war.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the missile strike on Hrova, a UN spokesperson said on Thursday, noting that “attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure are prohibited under international humanitarian law”.
On Friday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights deployed a field team to speak to survivors and gather information, OHCHR spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell said.
“The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, who saw for himself the horrific impact of such strikes, is profoundly shocked and condemns these killings,” she said.
OCHR said it was likely that the missile was fired by Russia but that it was too early to say for certain.
“At this stage, it’s obviously very difficult to establish with absolute certainty what happened,” Throssell said. “But given the location, given the fact that the cafe was struck, and the indications are that it was a Russian missile.”
Rescuers remove debris at a site of buildings of a local cafe and a grocery store, where at least 52 people were killed by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in the village of Hroza, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on 6th October, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Yan Dobronosov
Grain silo damaged
In the latest strikes overnight, Ukrainian air defences shot down 25 of 33 drones launched by Russia from the annexed Crimea peninsular, the air force said in a statement.
The drone strikes targeted Odesa and Mykolaiv regions in the south, Dnipropetrovsk region in the south-east, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions in the centre and also Kharkiv region in the north-east, the air force said on the Telegram messaging app.
One drone attack damaged a grain silo in the Izmail district of the Odesa region, Regional Governor Oleh Kiper said. Nine trucks caught fire at the site but the fire was put out quickly.
“The air alert in Odesa lasted for three-and-a-half hours,” Kiper said. “The enemy once again targeted the border and port infrastructure of the Izmail district.”
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The Ukrainian military said that operations at an international ferry checkpoint ‘Orlivka’ on the border with Romania were suspended and vehicles were rerouted following the drone attacks.
Russia has intensified attacks on Ukraine’s southern regions, home to Ukrainian Black Sea and river ports, since Moscow quit a grain deal in July that had ensured safe Ukrainian shipments via the Black Sea to help ease a global food crisis.
Ukraine is a major global grain producer and exporter, and says the attacks are intended to prevent it shipping its grain to the world.
Kyiv has mounted a counteroffensive in the south and east to try to oust the Russian forces, but has made only gradual progress in the past four months.
– With MAX HUNDER and OLENA HARMASH
