Russia shelled a block of flats in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk on Friday (Apr 14), killing eight people including a toddler who was pulled out of the rubble but died in an ambulance on the way to hospital, authorities said.
The strike on the quiet neighbourhood came as Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a Bill that will make it easier to mobilise citizens into the army, and block them from fleeing the country if drafted.
Russia also said it was pushing further into the hotspot of Bakhmut, 45km south-east of Sloviansk, which is one of the cities that will be at risk if Kyiv loses the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.
Sloviansk lies in a part of the Donetsk region that is under Ukrainian control.
“Twenty-one people were wounded and eight people died,” Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, said on Ukrainian television after the strike devastated an apartment building.
He said that the child who died was a boy.
AFP journalists saw rescue workers digging for survivors on the top floor of the typical Soviet-era housing bloc, and black smoke billowing from homes on fire across the street.
“A child died in an ambulance after being pulled out from the rubble,” Ukrainian police said on Twitter.
Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska said that the child was a two-year-old boy and sent her condolences to the family during this “indescribable grief”.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier decried Russia for “brutally shelling” residential buildings and “killing people in broad daylight”.
The street below – including a playground – was covered in a layer of concrete dust and debris, including torn pages from school books and children’s drawings.
SHOCKED RESIDENTS
“I live on the opposite side of the street and I was sleeping a little when I heard this huge boom and I ran out from my flat,” 59-year-old resident Larisa told AFP.
“I was really scared and in a state of shock,” she said, adding that the impact of the shelling had broken her windows and sent shards of glass flying throughout her home.
“I heard a woman screaming: ‘There’s a child here, there’s a child here.’ She was screaming so much.”
At another impact site in a residential neighbourhood, an elderly woman in a purple cardigan – dazed from the blasts – was gathering blown-off shards of metal from the ground outside a shop.
A resident nearby, who declined to give her name, told AFP journalists that the strikes had blown out her windows and dislodged her front door from its frame.
“Usually when this happens we immediately take cover in the bathroom,” she said.