A 10-year-old boy and his grandmother were killed in a Russian strike in Ukraine on Friday, local officials said. The bombing came the morning after one of the deadliest attacks on civilians since the war began.
Friday’s missile strike in Kharkiv, the second biggest city in Ukraine, hit a residential building and left more than 20 people injured, according to Oleh Synehubov, the head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration. Oleh Bychko, the father of the boy killed in the attack, told Reuters that he’d managed to pull his wife and younger son out of the rubble.
His lost son’s name was Tymofiy. Photos from the scene showed him being lifted into a body bag still wearing his Spider-Man pajamas.
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The upsurge in attacks on civilians comes after a number of embarrassing blows against Russia from Ukraine’s counter-offensive, including a missile attack right on the HQ of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet last month. This week, Russian ships were withdrawn from Crimea where their safety could no longer be assured.
“A child, a boy, 10 years old... My condolences to his family and loved ones!” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in a post on Twitter which included a video showing devastation in the aftermath of the attack. He added that the rescue operation was still ongoing. “I also express my gratitude to all our warriors who, despite everything, are moving forward, defeating the occupiers, and bringing justice for Russian crimes closer,” Zelensky wrote.
According to Synehubov, rescuers found the body of a 68-year-old woman as they continued to search through the rubble. He identified the woman as “the grandmother of a dead 10-year-old boy and his wounded 11-month-old brother.” Synehubov claimed that a Russian “Iskander” missile was used in the strike.
He also claimed that the death toll from a strike on a cafe and grocery store in the town of Hroza, around 50 miles from Kharkiv, had risen to 52. Speaking on Ukrainian television, he said one person had died in a medical facility and that other casualties remained in serious condition. The blast, which took place as people gathered to mourn the loss of a Ukrainian soldier, was the deadliest attack in the eastern Kharkiv region since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began 19 months ago.
The Hroza incident is also one of the worst civilian death tolls from a single strike in Ukraine during the war. It may be the highest since over 60 people were killed when a missile struck a busy train station in Kramatorsk in April 2022 as women and children attempted to evacuate the Donetsk region. Ukraine and its allies blamed Russia for the massacre, though Moscow denied responsibility.
A month earlier, just weeks into the invasion, a drama theater being used as an air raid shelter during the siege of Mariupol was bombed. Amnesty International said “at least a dozen people and likely many more” were killed in the attack, with an Associated Press estimate putting the true death toll “closer to 600.” Russia again denied responsibility, but an Amnesty investigation concluded that the Russian military “likely deliberately targeted” the theater despite knowing hundreds of civilians were inside, “making the attack a clear war crime.”
Between the start of the invasion and Sep. 24, 2023, the Office of the UN High Commissioner (OHCHR) has recorded 27,449 civilian casualties in Ukraine. Of those, 9,701 were killed and 17,748 injured. The human rights organization says 1,741 of the civilian casualties are children.
