Sloviansk, Ukraine, April 14 (AFP/APP): Russian shelling of a residential building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk killed at least five people on Friday, the local governor said, warning that others could be buried in the rubble.
Sloviansk lies in a part of the Donetsk region that is under Ukrainian control. It is close to territory controlled by Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decried Russia for “brutally shelling” residential buildings and “killing people in broad daylight.”
The governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said the strike came in the afternoon.
“As of 6:00 pm local time (1500 GMT), there are five dead and 15 wounded,” Kyrylenko said on Telegram.
“There is a possibility that seven people, including one child, are under the rubble.”
AFP journalists on the scene saw rescue workers digging for survivors on the top floor of a Soviet-era residential building and black smoke billowing from homes on fire across the street.
The street beneath — including a playground — was covered in a layer of concrete dust and debris, including torn pages from school books and children’s drawings.
“I live on the opposite side of the street and I was sleeping a little when I heard this huge boom and I ran out from my flat,” 59-year-old resident Larisa told AFP.
“I was really scared and in a state of shock,” she said, adding the impact of the shelling had broken her windows and sent shards of glass flying throughout her home.
“I heard a woman screaming, ‘There’s a child here, there’s a child here.’ She was screaming so much.”
At another impact site in a residential neighbourhood, an elderly woman in a purple cardigan — dazed from the blasts — was gathering blown-off shards of metal from the ground outside a shop.
A resident nearby, who declined to give her name, told AFP journalists the strikes had blown out her windows and dislodged her front door from its frame.
“Usually when this happens we immediately take cover in the bathroom,” she said.
“No one from our side of the building was injured but maybe someone here was,” she added, pointing to a pool of blood next to another entrance of her building.
Sloviansk is 45 kilometres (27 miles) north-west of Bakhmut — the current epicentre of fighting.
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