A Russian strike on a crowded DIY hardware store in Kharkiv killed 12 people and wounded dozens more, Ukrainian prosecutors said yesterday morning, the death toll rising as the country’s second-largest city reeled from two attacks a day earlier.
Two guided bombs hit the Epicentr K DIY hypermarket in a residential area of the city on Saturday afternoon, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on national TV.
The strikes caused a massive fire, which sent a column of thick, black smoke billowing hundreds of meters into the air.
Photo: Reuters
Forty-three people were injured, the local prosecutors’ office said, adding that 10 of the 12 dead had still not been identified.
About 120 people had been in the store when it was struck, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
“The attack targeted the shopping center, where there were many people — this is clearly terrorism,” Terekhov said.
Sixteen people were still missing after the strike, Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko wrote on Telegram.
The past week has seen an uptick in strikes on the city after Russian troops stormed across the border, opening a new front north of the city.
Russia has bombarded Kharkiv, which lies less than 30km from its border, throughout the war, having reached its outskirts in a failed bid to capture it in 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued a plea to Ukraine’s Western allies to help boost air defenses to keep the country’s cities safe.
French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X that the attack on the store was “unacceptable.”
A separate early evening missile strike hit a residential building in the center of the city of 1.3 million. The number of people wounded by that strike had climbed to 25 by yesterday morning.
The missile left a crater several meters deep in the pavement at the foot of the building, which also housed a post office, a beauty salon and a cafe.
Emergency workers ushered away residents of nearby apartment buildings. Some of the injured had blood on their faces.
Just over the border, in Russia’s Belgorod region, the regional governor said four residents died in Ukrainian attacks on Saturday.
Andriy Kudinov, director of the suburban shopping center, told local media the hardware store was full of shoppers buying items for their summer cottages.
It took 16 hours to fully extinguish the fire at the center, which had raged over an area of 13,000 m2, Klymenko said.
Dmytro Syrotenko, a 26-year-old employee of the DIY store, described panicked scenes.
“I was at my workplace. I heard the first hit and ... with my colleague, we fell to the ground. There was the second hit and we were covered with debris. Then we started to crawl to the higher ground,” said Syrotenko, who had a large gash on his face.
Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, denounced the strike as “yet another example of Russian madness. There is no other way to describe it.”
“When we tell world leaders that Ukraine needs sufficient air defenses, when we say we need real decisive measures to enable us to protect our people, so that Russian terrorists cannot even approach our border, we are talking about not allowing strikes like this to happen,” he said.
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