Five sleeping children dead in Ukraine, as Russian strikes kill at least 28 people
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A casualty being carried away from the scene of a Russian missile strike in Pryluky, Ukraine, on Oct 7. Three of the 18 victims of the strike were just 12 months old, while another was aged eight.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- Russian strikes killed at least 24 people across Ukraine, including four sleeping children in Pryluky, where a missile hit an apartment block and wrecked homes.
- President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack “a deliberate choice of terror” and said Russia fired at least 50 missiles and 130 drones overnight.
- Kyiv, Dnipro, Kremenchuk and Oleksandriya also came under attack, leaving residents frightened, sheltering underground, and facing growing risks to energy and civilian life.
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PRYLUKY, Ukraine – Russian attacks across Ukraine on Oct 7 killed at least 28 people, including five children who died when a missile slammed into an apartment block in the north of the country as they slept.
Windows shattered in the powerful blast in Pryluky, in the Chernihiv region, reducing one half of the five-storey building into a smoking pile of charred concrete and twisted metal.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said three of the dead were just 12 months old while another was aged eight. Another child’s body was pulled from under the rubble in the evening, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.
The Ukrainian authorities said that 20 people were killed in the Pryluky strike.
Seven other children were among dozens wounded, Zelensky said, accusing Russia of knowingly striking “ordinary cities, ordinary life”.
“The continued use of missiles against Ukraine, against our people, our children, is an absolutely deliberate choice of terror,” he said.
At the scene of the blast, Olena Sayun, a 40-year-old massage therapist, told AFP: “We were at home, sleeping. Our windows blew out. Thank God, we covered the child with our bodies. My husband got a few cuts on his back and I did too.
“The child just had a nervous breakdown, got very scared. We immediately ran to the bathroom and then, while everything in the apartment was being blown apart, we stayed in there.”
The strike, which locals said happened at about 6.30am, came after Zelensky on Oct 6 warned of a “massive” Russian attack, particularly targeting energy infrastructure.
Two people were killed when missiles slammed into a high-rise building at Kremenchuk in central Ukraine, while two others died in Oleksandriya, he added.
In Kyiv, two people died in a fire that was caused by a strike in the densely populated Darnytskyi neighbourhood, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Two more people were killed in later strikes, he said.
Residents at the site of a Russian strike on an apartment building in the town of Kremenchuk, in Ukraine’s Poltava region, on Oct 7.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Air raid sirens
Kyiv has come under increased attack as winter approaches, with air raid sirens wailing nearly constantly.
Worried residents hunkered down in subway stations overnight, hauling duffel bags, sleeping mats and blankets.
“We grabbed our things and came here. We live right next door,” Iryna Rybalchenko, who works in a bank, told AFP, sitting on the platform wrapped in a dark hoodie and surrounded by bags.
“The whole of Kyiv is in a state of fear. We were stuck at work today and everyone – our group chats, our bosses – was messaging us to be careful.”
Russia launched at least 50 missiles and 130 drones overnight against several regions, including Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Poltava, Ukraine’s air force said.
Zelensky, who called it “one of the most vile strikes” in the nearly five-year conflict, said that some were shot down but that ballistic missiles were “the greatest challenge”, and new air defences were essential to help Ukraine defend itself.
Yuliia Shamrai, 31, who works in online marketing and lives near the stricken building in Pryluky, said: “I don’t see any military significance in this at all.”
Ukrainian sappers recovering an unexploded Russian ballistic missile in the capital city, Kyiv, on Oct 7.
PHOTO: EPA
‘Absolutely terrified’
Klitschko warned last week that the capital should now be on a war footing after repeated Russian strikes on bridges and energy infrastructure.
Power cuts on the evening of Oct 6 plunged parts of Kyiv into darkness, with traffic disrupted and water cuts on the right bank of the capital.
The air force said on the morning of Oct 7 that it had intercepted five ballistic missiles, as well as 39 cruise missiles and over 100 drones.
Concern has mounted about rising civilian casualties on both sides, as Ukraine also steps up its long-range attacks on Russian targets.
In the Russia-occupied part of Ukraine’s Kherson region, two people, including a teenage girl, were killed in a drone strike, the Moscow-backed head of the Russian-controlled zone posted on Telegram.
Two more people were killed in a drone strike on a village near the Russia-annexed Ukrainian city of Donetsk, the Russian-installed mayor Alexei Kulemzin said.
Zelensky said Ukraine’s “just responses” to Russian strikes saw it hit two oil facilities and a training ground in the Perm, Samara and Astrakhan regions, as well as the Black Sea. AFP