Russian rockets struck a five-story apartment building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Sunday (Jul 10), killing at least 15 people and leaving another 20 people possibly trapped, according to local officials. As rescuers worked their way through the debris, the authorities said.
While Moscow said its forces attacked Ukrainian army hangars housing U.S.-produced M777 howitzers, a sort of artillery, near Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk area, Ukraine also reported confrontations with Russian forces on fronts in the east and south.
The strike on the apartment complex happened on Saturday night in the village of Chasiv Yar, according to Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko. On Sunday afternoon, the local emergency service said that there had been 15 fatalities.
Six individuals had been recovered from the rubble at Chasiv Yar, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, who also reported that 23 people, including a toddler, were still buried.
"We ran to the basement, there were three hits, the first somewhere in the kitchen," a local neighbor identified only as Ludmila spoke as rescuers rescued a body covered in a white sheet and cleaned the debris with both their hands and a crane.
"The second, I do not even remember, there was lightning, we ran towards the second entrance and then straight into the basement. We sat there all night until this morning." Venera said, a different survivor, claimed she had wished to save her two kittens. "I was thrown into the bathroom, it was all chaos, I was in shock, all covered in blood," she said, crying. "By the time I left the bathroom, the room was full up of rubble, three floors fell down. I never found the kittens under the rubble."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, claimed in a Telegram message that the attack was "another terrorist attack" and that as a result, Russia should be labeled as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Russia, which claims to be carrying out a "special military operation" to demilitarize Ukraine, rejects accusations that it intentionally targeted people.
Iryna Vereshchuk, the deputy prime minister of Ukraine, urged residents of the Russian-occupied city of Kherson to leave immediately as her country's military forces were preparing a counterattack there.
In the early days following Russia's invasion on February 24, Ukraine lost control of most of the Kherson region along the Black Sea.
"It's clear there will be fighting. There will be artillery shelling ... and we, therefore, urge [people] to evacuate urgently," Ms. Vereshchuk said on national television.
She remarked that she was unable to predict the precise timing of the counteroffensive.
