Russian bomb hits high-rise building in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, killing seven

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(Reuters) -A Russian guided bomb attack on Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv hit a residential building and a playground on Friday, killing seven people and injuring at least 77 more, local authorities said.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a 14-year-old girl was among the dead. Ihor Terekhov, the city’s mayor, had earlier said on Telegram that one child was killed in the playground.

The 12-storey apartment block caught fire as a result of the strike, the mayor said. The death toll from the attack climbed to seven when a woman’s body was recovered from the rubble, he added in a later statement.

About 20 of the injured were in severe condition, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

One end of the block was engulfed in black smoke, with many of the upper floors in flames. Several cars parked outside were gutted by fire.

Emergency services and rescue volunteers rushed to carry survivors out of the building. The body of one of the victims lay under a carpet on the ground outside, surrounded by police.

Residents of all ages, some of them covered in blood, sat stunned on benches and walls outside as medics attended to their injuries.

Kharkiv has been the focus of heavy Russian bombing throughout the war, although there had been a drop in intensity in recent weeks, possibly related to a shock incursion launched by Ukrainian forces into Russia’s Kursk region.

Ukrainian authorities said that Friday’s attack involved five aerial guided bombs launched from planes in Russia’s Belgorod region, also known as “glide bombs” which are fitted with a navigation system taking them to their targets.

The weapons are hard to intercept and they have become a fearsome tool in the war in eastern Ukraine in recent months that can cause huge devastation.

Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians. Thousands have been killed and wounded during the full-scale invasion Moscow launched in Ukraine in 2022.

In the wake of the Kharkiv strike, Zelenskiy renewed a call on Western allies to allow Ukraine to use long-range Western weapons to attack Russian military air bases.

“A strike … would not have happened if our defence forces had the ability to destroy Russian military aircraft where they are based,” Zelenskiy said on Telegram. “There is no rational reason to restrict Ukraine’s defences.”

Kyiv says that the most effective way to counter such strikes is to target Russian planes, not the bombs themselves.

(Reporting and writing by Yuliia Dysa and Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Louise Heavens, Alison Williams, Mike Collett-White and Deepa Babington)