Ukrainian city reels after Russian strike

CHERNIHIV - From a hospital bed, her legs still covered in blood, Diana Kazakova described the horror of

a Russian missile hitting the heart of Chernihiv city

in northern Ukraine on Saturday.

She was inside a fabric store when the strike happened at around 11.30am – just a few minutes after warning sirens sounded across the city.

“The window completely fell on me and I fell” she told AFP, hospitalised with a concussion and leg injuries.

“Then I woke up later and was completely stunned and shocked.”

In the street outside, “people were crying, shouting... it was scary,” she said.

The strike came during the Orthodox holiday of the Transfiguration of the Lord, with some attending morning church services in the city, which lies some 150km north of the capital Kyiv.

The roof of Chernihiv’s theatre in the central square was badly damaged by the strike, with window panes also blown out, although the exterior walls of the building were still standing.

Ms Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the UN’s cultural organisation Unesco, said she was “appalled” by the attack, in a post on social media.

The historic city centre is a candidate for nomination to the Unesco World Heritage List, according to Ukraine’s culture ministry.

The powerful blast of the explosion shattered all the windows of restaurants, cafes, shops and apartments in two surrounding streets.

AFP saw one vehicle which had been thrown 4m through the air against the wall of a restaurant.

Cafe manager Viktoria Zakharchenko, 29, said she had just arrived at work, near the fabric shop, when the missile hit.

“When I came out it was terrible – I didn’t know if the people who were lying on the ground were still alive or already dead,” she told AFP.

‘Dead and wounded’

The strike killed seven people and wounded 144 on Saturday, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in what the UN denounced as a “heinous” attack.

“It is heinous to attack the main square of a large city, in the morning, while people are out walking, some going to church to celebrate a religious day for many Ukrainians,” said Ms Denise Brown, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine.

“I condemn this repeated pattern of Russian strikes on populated areas of Ukraine... Attacks directed against civilians or civilian objects are strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law,” she added.

At the parking lot in front of the columns of the theatre’s facade, around twenty cars had their windshields smashed in.

A small van nearby had blood across the front seats.

AFP saw a man nearby in military uniform inspecting a pile of scrap metal and coloured wires on the ground, believed to be parts of the missile.

Nearby, 24-year-old restaurant worker Lioudmila was helping to remove debris.

She said she was 200m away from the restaurant when she heard a very loud whistle and an explosion.

“I fell to the ground,” she told AFP.

There were “screams, there were a lot of dead and wounded, and ambulances,” she said, her hands still shaking with shock.

The streets around were covered with debris, glass and felled trees, with some people wearing blood-stained clothes.

Mr Zelensky said that the missile had turned “an ordinary Saturday...into a day of pain and loss”.

The dead included “a girl, her name was Sofia, she was six years old,” and that there were 15 children among the 144 wounded, said Mr Zelensky.

“Our soldiers will respond to Russia for this terrorist attack – a tangible answer,” he vowed. AFP