Ukrainian prosecutors said on Sunday morning that Russian forces had attacked a crowded DIY store in Kharkiv, killing 12 people and wounding dozens, a rise in the death toll after two attacks in the country's second-largest city in the previous day.
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Two guided bombs hit the Epicentre DIY hypermarket in a residential area of ​​the city on Saturday afternoon, regional governor Oleh Shnievbov said on state television.
The explosion sparked a massive fire and sent a column of thick, black smoke rising several hundred metres into the air.
Local prosecutors said 43 people were injured and that 10 of the 12 dead were yet to be identified.
Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said about 120 people were in the hardware store when the bomb went off.
“The attack was aimed at a shopping centre where many people were present and is clearly a terrorist attack,” Terekhov said.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said in a post on the Telegram app that 16 people were still missing after the attack.
Attacks on the city have increased in the last week after Russian troops invaded across the border, opening a new front to the north of the city.
Russia has shelled Kharkiv, located less than 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, throughout the war and reached the outskirts in an unsuccessful attempt to seize the city in 2022.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Ukraine's Western allies to help bolster air defenses to secure Ukraine's cities, and French President Emmanuel Macron, writing on social media platform X, condemned the attacks on stores as “unacceptable.”
A separate missile attack earlier in the evening hit a home in the center of the city of 1.3 million people, leaving the number of people wounded in that attack at 25 by Sunday morning.
The missile left a crater several metres deep in the sidewalk at the base of the building, which also housed a post office, a hairdresser and a cafe.
Rescue workers evacuated residents of nearby apartments, some of whom had blood on their faces.
Across the border, in Russia's Belgorod region, the regional governor said four residents were killed in a Ukrainian military attack on Saturday.
Firefighters fighting a fire
Andriy Khudinov, director of a suburban shopping centre, told local media that hardware stores were packed with shoppers buying items for their summer homes.
Interior Minister Klimenko said the fire spread to an area of ​​13,000 square metres (15,548 square yards) and took 16 hours to put out.
Rescue workers, medical personnel and journalists had to rush from the scenes of both attacks on the city and take refuge above ground, fearing new attacks, as has happened several times during recent Russian attacks.
Dmytro Syrotenko, 26, an employee at the DIY centre, described feeling panicked.
“I was at work and we heard the first explosion and fell to the ground with my colleagues. Then there was a second explosion and we were covered in rubble. Then we started crawling to higher ground,” said Syrotenko, who suffered large cuts on his face.
Syrotenko told Reuters he and several colleagues were carried to safety by rescue workers who also helped other shoppers.
In an evening video address, President Zelensky condemned the attack as “another example of Russian madness – there's no other way to describe it.”
“When we tell world leaders that Ukraine needs adequate air defenses, and we say we need to take real, decisive steps to protect our people so that Russian terrorists can't even get close to our borders, we're saying we will not tolerate attacks like this,” he said.
Zelensky later wrote in a Telegram post, noting that an air raid warning had been in effect in Kharkiv for more than 12 hours and that 200 emergency personnel and 400 police officers remained on the scene responding to the aftermath of the attack.
Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians but thousands have been killed and wounded in its 27-month invasion of Ukraine.
(Reuters)
