Several dead in attacks on Kharkiv in Ukraine and Belgorod in Russia

Twelve people were killed and dozens more injured in a Russian attack on a busy hardware store in Kharkiv, Ukrainian prosecutors said on Sunday morning. The death toll is rising while the country’s second-largest city is still reeling from the two attacks a day earlier.

Two guided bombs hit the Epicentr hardware store in a residential area of ​​the city on Saturday afternoon, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on national television.

The attacks caused a massive fire that sent a thick, black column of smoke hundreds of meters into the air.

The local prosecutor’s office said 43 people were injured. Ten of the twelve dead have still not been identified.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said there were about 120 people in the hardware store when the bombs hit.

“The attack targeted the shopping centre where many people were gathered – this is clearly terrorism.”

In a post on the Telegram app, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko confirmed that 16 people were still missing following the attack.

Last week there was an increase in attacks on the city after Russian troops crossed the border and opened a new front north of the city.

Russia bombed Kharkiv, less than 30 kilometers from the Russian border, throughout the war and reached the outskirts of the country in 2022 in a failed attempt to take the city.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked Ukraine’s Western allies to help strengthen air defenses to ensure the security of the country’s cities.

Ukrainian forces carried out several drone and artillery attacks on the Russian city of Belgorod and several villages near the border overnight. Four civilians were killed and many others, including children, were injured, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Sunday.

Between Saturday evening and Sunday morning, around 30 missiles were fired over the Russian border region, Gladkov said. Despite the interceptions, the attacks claimed numerous victims.

“I am saddened to report that the death toll of civilians has risen to four,” the official wrote on Telegram.

Three of the fatalities were the result of rocket attacks on the village of Oktyabrsky shortly before 7 p.m. Two people died on the spot, while another man died a few hours later in a hospital from “shrapnel injuries to the lower extremities.”

Another woman was “killed by a direct hit in the courtyard of a private residential building in the village of Dubovoye,” Gladkov wrote around 9 p.m., adding that she “was in a greenhouse at the time of the attack and succumbed to her injuries before the ambulance arrived.”

While there were no casualties in the city of Belgorod itself, at least two residential buildings were heavily damaged by direct artillery hits. Two schools were damaged by explosions and shrapnel, while the facades, windows and roofs of several commercial buildings were partially destroyed. According to videos from the scene, several vehicles were hit.

By midnight, the number of injured across the region rose to 16 people, including at least two children.

An eight-year-old boy injured in the shelling of Oktyabrsky suffered a “blast injury and external trauma to the lumbar region,” Gladkov wrote, adding that the child’s “condition is assessed as moderate.”

In another incident, a nine-year-old girl was injured when “a moving car on the highway between the village of Borisovka and the village of Plotvyanka in the Volokonovsky district was attacked by a drone,” Gladkov added.

Belgorod has become one of the main targets of Kiev’s attacks. Previously, 25 civilians were killed in a bombing at a celebration on New Year’s Eve. In recent months, there have been persistent artillery shelling and attempts to break through into Russian territory.

In early May, Moscow’s forces began an advance into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which borders Belgorod region, capturing numerous villages to create a buffer zone to contain cross-border attacks.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed that if Kyiv continues to “shell residential areas in the border regions,” Russia will be “forced to create a security zone” to deprive Kyiv of the opportunity to carry out such attacks.