A Russian bombing killed a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother this Friday in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine. the day after the same region suffered one of the deadliest attacks on civilians since the invasion began.
“The body of a 10-year-old boy was found in the rubble,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said on Telegram, adding that his grandmother had also died.
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The regional governor, Oleg Synegubov, for his part, reported at least 28 wounded.including an eleven-month-old baby who is a family member of the two fatal victims.
Two residential buildings were damaged and a three-story residential building was destroyed. According to police, both buildings were hit by two Iskander ballistic missiles.
An AFP photographer saw what looked like the fragment of one of the missiles at the bottom of a large crater in one of the streets in the center of the city, which was filled with rubble and overturned or burned civilian vehicles.
The day before, at least 52 people, including a six-year-old child, were killed in a bombing in Groza, also in the Kharkiv region.where the inhabitants had gathered for the wake of a soldier, according to the latest report offered by the governor.
The attack occurred in broad daylight and hit a store and a cafe located in the same building.where there were about sixty people.
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At that moment, Serguii Pletinka, a 34-year-old soldier who was on leave, was at his parents’ house, in front of the cafeteria.
“I ran and arrived first (…) I heard a woman screaming. She was trapped between a refrigerator and a wall that had collapsed,” he said.
The hypotheses about Thursday’s bombing
This Friday early, Firefighters, equipped with shovels and cranes, were removing debris in the area.
Oleksii, a neighbor, went with his family to the cemetery, located at the entrance to the town, to delimit the area in which his brother and sister-in-law, killed in the bombing, will be buried.
“I don’t know when we can bury them. My brother’s body was whole but his wife’s body was missing his head,” he told AFP.
In one of the streets of the cemetery, The grave of soldier Andrii Kozyr was covered with flowers and a Ukrainian flag. The residents who had participated in his funeral had gathered in the cafeteria impacted by the bombing.
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“Everyone who was at the funeral has died. This happened right after people entered the cafeteria,” said 73-year-old Valentina Koziienko. She lives right across the street.
“How did the Russians know there would be so many people there? Maybe someone told them,” he said.
The day before, the police officer in charge of the investigation, Serguii Bolvinov, told AFP that one of the hypotheses his team is considering is “that someone had given the coordinates (of the cafeteria) to the Russians.”
“Our job is to find out if someone could give these coordinates knowing that at that time there was a meeting” at that location, he added.
Support for Ukraine
The bombing in Groza was denounced by the international community, which called for attacks against civilians to stop. According to the UN, “everything suggests” that it was a Russian missile that hit the town, where 330 people lived before the tragedy.
But, When asked about the bombing, the Kremlin stated that it only attacks “military targets” and not civilians.
“These two atrocities prove that global support for Ukraine must be maintained and strengthened. Weakening it would only lead to more war crimes of this type,” the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kuleba, defended on Friday.
The call coincides with a moment of political crisis in the United States, which could lead to a reduction in aid to the former Soviet republic, which worries Kiev and its Western allies.
On the other hand, this Friday morning, drone attacks were reported in the center, northeast and south of Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities claimed to have shot down 25 of the 33 Iranian-made Shahed drones sent to their territory from Russia overnight.
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The governor of the southern Odessa region, Oleg Kiper, said a grain warehouse in the port city of Izmail was damaged by dronesand that nine trucks were set on fire.
The port of Izmail, on the banks of the Danube, is often the target of Russian attacks. Ukraine uses it to export its agricultural products, especially wheat.
AFP
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