Seven people were killed, including three children, on Saturday during a nighttime strike by Russian drones on a gas station in Kharkiv, a large city in the northeast, which poured a “river of fire” into a street and destroyed around fifteen houses.
According to local authorities, this attack carried out with Iranian-made Shahed drones hit a gas station and caused the spill of burning fuel, the fire quickly covering a large area and leading to the evacuation of around fifty people.
“My mother-in-law called, she said it was burning […] Then she called back and started screaming that the flames had spread to the house. We heard the last cries and that’s it, she no longer gave any sign of life,” Natalia, a relative of the victims, told AFP.
Oleksandre Lagoutine remained alive by managing to flee the flames. “There was a boom, it caught fire, and in five minutes we had a river of fire,” he testifies.
According to regional governor Oleg Synegoubov, seven people died in this attack, including three children: a 7-year-old, a 4-year-old and a six-month-old baby. Four people, including a child, were saved from the flames and around fifteen houses were destroyed.
“There was a family in one of the houses — five people. Two parents and three of their children. They are all dead, burned alive. In another building, there was a man who could no longer walk. His wife took care of him. They also died, burned alive,” said Serguii Bolvinov, a Kharkiv police official.
According to him, around 3,800 tonnes of fuel were stored in this service station which was also an oil depot.
“Infernal Molten Mass”
“The whole street turned into an infernal molten mass. As the fuel mixed with the snow and began to burn, houses along the street began to catch fire,” Bolvinov said.
“Our anger is absolute. These people will pay for everything,” the head of the presidential administration Andriï Iermak raged on Telegram.
Saturday’s attack comes after a series of nighttime strikes in Kharkiv and further east, in the town of Velykyi Burlouk.
The governor of the Kharkiv region had previously said that civilian areas had been affected in both localities, including a cafe in Velykyi Burlouk.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, two people were killed and two others injured in a Russian strike on the village of Veletynske in the Kherson region, the regional administration said.
Russian drone strikes also targeted Odessa, a large Black Sea port, leaving four people injured by fragments of downed vehicles, according to Governor Oleg Kiper. In Izmail, on the Danube, the strikes destroyed industrial installations, he added.
In total, 23 of the 31 explosive drones launched by Russia on the Kharkiv and Odessa regions were destroyed in flight, the Air Force said.
On the side of Ukraine’s Western allies, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Saturday called on Europeans to increase their weapons production to increase the deliveries that kyiv sorely needs.
Less than a week before the meeting of NATO Defense Ministers in Brussels, on February 15 and 16, he insisted on the need to “reconstruct and develop more quickly the European defense industrial base”.
Ukraine has repeatedly said that it needs more anti-aircraft defense systems to deal with strikes by the Russian army.