Kyiv rescuers find more bodies as death toll from latest Russian attack climbs to 28
KYIV, Ukraine,June 19, (AP): Emergency workers pulled more bodies Wednesday from the rubble of a nine-story Kyiv apartment building demolished by a Russian missile, raising the death toll from the latest attack on the Ukrainian capital to 28. The building in Kyiv's Solomianskyi district took a direct hit and collapsed during the deadliest Russian attack on Kyiv this year.
Authorities said that 23 of those killed were inside the building. The remaining five died elsewhere in the city. Workers used cranes, excavators and their hands to clear more debris from the site, while sniffer dogs searched for buried victims. The blast blew out windows and doors in neighboring buildings in a wide radius of damage.
The attack overnight on Monday into Tuesday was part of a sweeping barrage as Russia once again sought to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles in what Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said was one of the biggest bombardments of the war, now in its fourth year.
Russia has launched a summer offensive on parts of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line and has intensified long-range attacks that have struck urban residential areas. At the same time, US-led peace efforts have failed to grain traction. Also, Middle East tensions and US trade tariffs have drawn world attention away from Ukraine's pleas for more diplomatic and economic pressure to be placed on Russia.
The US Embassy in Kyiv said the attack clashed with the attempts by the administration of President Donald Trump to reach a settlement that will stop the fighting. "This senseless attack runs counter to President Trump's call to stop the killing and end the war,' the embassy posted on social platform X. Kyiv authorities declared Wednesday an official day of mourning.
Mourners laid flowers on swings and slides at a playground across the street from the collapsed building. On Tuesday, a man had waited hours there for his 31-year-old son's body to be pulled from the rubble. Psychologists from Ukraine's emergency services provided counseling to survivors of the attack and to family members of those who died. "Some people are simply in a stupor, they simply can't move,' Karyna Dovhal, one of the psychologists, told AP. "People are waiting for their sons, brothers, uncles ... Everyone is waiting.'
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Arab Times
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a day ago
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