At least five people were killed and 13 injured on Sunday in a series of strikes on Kharkiv, a major city in northeastern Ukraine, which caused fires, emergency services told AFP.
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AFP journalists heard two bursts of gunfire and saw five fires spreading through residential areas in central Kharkiv. Fire trucks were crossing the city in all directions to reach the burning apartments.
In the moments after the strikes, a sense of panic was noticeable in the streets, with fleeing pedestrians and cars speeding from the scene.
At one location, AFP saw a bloodstained coat next to a pool of fresh blood on the floor. A resident said he heard between six and eight missiles fall.
According to Maksym Khaoustov, head of the regional rescue services, five people were killed and 13 others injured.
Saturday, strikes had already started a fire in several buildings in the city center and destroyed a kitchen which provided free meals to the inhabitants of this city, under pressure from the Russian army which invaded the country on February 24.
Sunday morning before the new strikes, regional governor Oleg Sinegoubov announced that he had recorded three dead and 31 injured, including four children, during the previous day.
On Friday, he reported ten killed and 35 injured in Russian shelling of a residential area in Kharkiv. Seven civilians were also killed and 27 others injured by Russian fire on evacuation buses in the region, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office.
Ukraine’s second city with nearly 1.5 million pre-war inhabitants, Kharkiv was the target of heavy fighting for several days at the start of the offensive but always remained under the control of Ukrainian forces.