(Kyiv) At least eight people were killed and around ten others were injured in new Russian strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, and the regions of Sumy (northeast) and Donetsk (east) , announced the authorities.
Officials in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, meanwhile, said separate Ukrainian attacks left at least four people dead in their regions.
In Kharkiv, located not far from the Russian border, three rescuers died in a “second strike” on a place which had just been bombed in a “densely populated neighborhood”, announced its mayor Igor Terekhov.
Twelve people were injured “to varying degrees”, he added.
The three rescuers were men aged 32, 41 and 52, according to Interior Minister Igor Klimenko. A fourth rescuer is among the injured.
Such attacks, called “double strikes,” involve bombing a location first, then a second time when emergency services have arrived.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called the bombing “despicable and cynical.”
“Twenty Shahed”
PHOTO SREUTERS
Kharkiv, April 4, 2024
In the suburbs of Kharkiv, a man died in a separate attack, the regional governor announced.
A 68-year-old woman suffered the same fate in a strike on a building in another part of the city, according to police.
In the neighboring region of Sumy, a 47-year-old employee of a gas distribution network was killed in a Russian bombing, according to the Energy Ministry.
In Donetsk, a couple – a 53-year-old man and a 51-year-old woman – lost their lives on Thursday in a Russian artillery fire and two other people were injured in the town of New York, the prosecutor’s office announced Ukrainian.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported a Russian raid of “20 Shahed”, Iranian-designed explosive drones, on the Kharkiv region, 11 of which were “destroyed” by anti-aircraft defense.
Energy infrastructure was “damaged” by these strikes in this region, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy.
Ukrainian officials are increasing calls of alarm for their Western allies to deliver more ammunition and anti-aircraft defense means to better counter Russian attacks.
In his evening speech, Volodymyr Zelensky called on countries still thinking about “how to fight against Russian terror” to send “some anti-aircraft defense systems which could fundamentally change the situation”.
But American military aid to Ukraine is drying up due to opposition from Donald Trump’s Republican camp, which is blocking an envelope of some $60 billion promised by President Joe Biden.
In the area of southern Ukraine under Russian occupation, two civilians traveling in a truck were killed by a Ukrainian drone in the village of Babyne, on the banks of the Dnieper, said the head of the regional authorities installed by Moscow, Andrei Alekseyenko.
Two men also died in a Ukrainian strike in Donetsk (east), very close to the front, said Thursday evening the head of the local occupation administration, Denis Pushilin.