Kharkiv, Ukraine
Reuters
A total of 17 people were killed and 42 were injured in two separate Russian attacks on the major northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, the regional governor said on Thursday.
Three civilians were killed and 17 wounded in a pre-dawn rocket strike on Thursday, the local emergency service said. That followed a Russian attack on Kharkiv on Wednesday, in which the emergencies service initially said 12 people were killed.
Firefighters work at the site of a House of Culture hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on 18th August. PICTURE: Reuters/Sofiia Gatilova
Governor Oleh Synehubov said more bodies had been discovered as rescuers picked their way through destroyed houses.
“As of now, 17 people have died in Kharkiv…and 42 people have been injured,” he wrote on Telegram, describing the attacks as “an act of terrorism”.
Synehubov also said two people were killed on Thursday in a rocket attack on the town of Krasnohrad in the Kharkiv region.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described Wednesday’s attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, as a “devious and cynical strike on civilians with no justification”.
“We cannot forgive. We will avenge it,” he said.
Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians in what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Kharkiv resident Tamara Kramarenko said the dormitory where she lived had been hit by a missile on Wednesday.
“Bang, grey. Grey fog…we got three windows – nothing else left! The stairs started collapsing, people started helping each other,” she told Reuters.
We rely on our readers to fund Sight's work - become a financial supporter today!
For more information, head to our Subscriber's page.
Meanwhile, at least four explosions hit an area near a major Russian military airport in the annexed peninsula of Crimea on Thursday, three local sources said. A pro-Moscow official said no damage had been done.
The sources said the blasts occurred in the vicinity of the Belbek base, north of Sevastopol.
The governor of Sevastopol, citing what he called preliminary information, said Russian anti-aircraft forces had downed a Ukrainian drone.
“There is no damage. No-one was hurt,” said Mikhail Razvozhayev, writing on Telegram.
Footage posted to a Ukrainian news-gathering site showed what appeared to be a rocket being fired into the night sky and the sound of at least two explosions. Reuters was unable to immediately verify the veracity of the footage.
Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, is an important supply line for what President Vladimir Putin calls his special military operation in Ukraine.
Russia on Tuesday blamed saboteurs for orchestrating a series of explosions at an ammunition depot in Crimea. Last week blasts ripped through a Crimean air base, which Moscow at the time said was caused by an accident.
