A Russian strike on an apartment block in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has injured at least 41 people, with fears others are trapped under the rubble, Ukrainian officials said Sunday.
Three of those who were injured when a guided aerial bomb hit the 12-story building were children, the head of the Kharkiv city military administration Oleh Syniehubov said.
At least 14 people have been hospitalized as a result of the strike and one person has been reported missing.
“There may be people under the rubble,” Syniehubov said. “The search and rescue operation continues.”
One of the residents refused to evacuate without his dog, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. “Every life is important to our rescuers, so they rescued both the man and his pet from the smoke-filled apartment on the 12th floor,” he added.
Video shared online by the minister showed the dog being lifted in the air by one of the emergency cranes before reaching the roof of the building and being received by one of the rescuers.
The strike sparked a fire on the ninth floor. Three apartments were completely destroyed. Dozens of cars have been damaged from the strike, which also left hundreds of windows shattered.
“Residents are being evacuated. Specialized, humanitarian, international and Ukrainian organizations are responding to the scene,” Syniehubov said.
“This is civil infrastructure,” the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets said. “Russia massively violates human rights and international humanitarian law. The reaction must be here and now.”
Kharkiv lies near the border with Russia and has seen frequent attacks since the full-scale Russian invasion began in 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky repeated his call for more military support from allies following the attack.
“The world must help us defend ourselves against Russian military aircraft and the dozens of guided aerial bombs that claim Ukrainian lives every day,” Zelensky said in a social media post on Sunday.
“This terror can be stopped. But to stop it, the fear of making strong, objectively necessary decisions must be overcome. Only decisiveness can bring a just end to this war. It is decisiveness that most effectively protects against terror,” he said.
Ukrainian authorities earlier put the toll from Russian strikes over a 24-hour period at nine, including a man and a woman in their 60s killed in Odesa.
Zelensky said that over the past week “the Russians have launched around 30 missiles of various types, more than 800 guided aerial bombs, and nearly 300 strike drones against Ukraine.”