Seven killed in Russian drone attack on Odesa, Ukraine says
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A general view shows an apartment building heavily damaged by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine March 2, 2024. REUTERS/Stringer
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By Iryna Nazarchuk
ODESA, Ukraine (Reuters) -A Russian drone hit an apartment block in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa on Saturday, killing at least seven people including a three-year-old and a woman together with her infant child, regional authorities said.
“Rescuers in Odesa have just uncovered the bodies of a mother with a three-month-old baby,” Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said in a post on his Telegram channel beside a photograph of a rescue worker next to a bloodied blanket, a baby’s arm visible on one side and an adult arm extending out the other.
Eight people were wounded, and rescuers were still looking for more people under the debris, Oleh Kiper, Odesa regional governor, said.
Smoke poured from rubble strewn across the ground where the drone had ripped a chunk several storeys high out of the building.
“My husband quickly ran out to help people … then I saw people running out and I understood people had died in there,” said Svitlana Tkachenko, who lives in a neighbouring building.
Clothes and furniture were scattered in the ruined mass of concrete and steel hanging off the side of the apartment block.
“Russia continues to fight civilians … One of the enemy drones hit a residential building in Odesa. Eighteen apartments were destroyed,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Telegram post.
Ukraine’s State Emergencies Service posted photos including of a dead toddler being placed in a body bag by rescuers.
“This is impossible to forget! This is impossible to forgive,” it wrote. It said five people including a child had been rescued alive.
Zelenskiy said the drone was a Shahed supplied by Iran. Russia has launched several thousand of these long-range winged drones at targets deep inside Ukraine since Moscow’s full-scale invasion two years ago.
