Two children were among three killed in a Russian airstrike on an apartment building in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, with dozens more injured, the local governor said Thursday.
A guided aerial bomb — a powerful weapon used widely by Russia — hit a building in the city on Wednesday evening, according to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The attack killed at least three people, including two boys aged 12 and 15, as well as a man. Another 35 people were wounded, Kharkiv region Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
“The body of a 15-year-old boy with no signs of life was pulled from the rubble of the destroyed part of the nine-story building,” Syniehubov said.
Rescuers struggled to remove the body of the boy, who lived with his grandparents on the first floor of the building, after several floors collapsed, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said.
AFP journalists at the scene saw rescuers searching through debris of the damaged apartment building, whose facade had partially collapsed.
The city’s mayor Ihor Terekhov has said people were trapped in the upper floors of the building, adding that the airstrike destroyed several floors.
Kharkiv lies around 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Russian border and has been pounded by Russian air strikes throughout the two-and-a-half-year war.
On Wednesday evening, Zelensky called on his Western allies to act in response to the strike.
“Every decision they delay means at least dozens or even hundreds of such Russian bombs against Ukraine. Their decisions mean the lives of our people,” he said on Telegram.
Zelensky has been asking Western countries to provide Ukraine with more air defense systems, particularly long-range weapons.
Ukraine’s military downed two missiles and 17 drones launched by Russia overnight, the air force said Thursday.
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