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At least 47 people, including five children, have been injured after a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv. The attack targeted one of Ukraine’s biggest cities, not far from the border with Russia. It struck a shopping center and a major sports arena in northeastern Kharkiv on Sunday around 1 p.m. local time.
The mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, said that strikes hit the Saltivskyi and Nemyshlianskyi districts, where the prosecutor general described Russia as having fired Iskander missiles. Seven children were among the injured, including the youngest at just three months old. “Several people are in a severe condition,” Ukrainska Pravda reported the mayor as saying.
He added that rescue teams and ambulances who responded to the call also came under fire. “The enemy launched a cynical repeat strike on our city … leaving doctors injured,” Terekhov said. The attack comes just a few days after at least seven people were killed and dozens injured when Russian weapons struck an apartment block in the city, starting a fire.
After Sunday’s attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his demands for Ukraine’s Western allies to allow Ukraine to hit targets deeper inside Russian territory with Western-supplied weapons. Zelenskyy says the option is needed if Ukraine is to diminish the threat from the Russian military more effectively.
“All the necessary forces of the world must be brought in to stop this terror,” Zelenskyy said on his Telegram channel after officials said the attack involved at least ten missiles. “This does not require extraordinary forces but enough courage on the part of the leaders – the courage to give Ukraine what it needs to defend itself.”
Photos and videos from the scene show rescue workers and volunteers carrying the injured from the ruined buildings. Many of them were covered in dust, their clothes torn and ripped. Shattered glass and debris were strewn as people ran toward a metro station for safety.
Its Sunday attack came a few hours after Russia said it had intercepted more than 150 drones over its territory that it said were part of a “massive” Ukrainian attack. Last week, Russia pounded Ukraine with its heaviest air strikes of the war, homing in on the country’s energy network.
Moscow denies targeting civilians, saying that damaging Ukraine’s energy system is a legitimate military goal. Its drone and missile barrages have killed thousands of civilians since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Zelenskyy said that last week alone, Russia had used 160 missiles, 780 guided aerial bombs, and 400 attack drones against cities and soldiers across Ukraine. He called on Telegram for a decision “on long-range strikes on missile launch sites from Russia, the destruction of Russian military logistics, on joint shooting down of missiles and drones.”