Friday 6 October 2023

At least 51 killed after Russian attack hits shop and cafe in Ukrainian village of Hroza, officials say.

 Extract from ABC News

Posted 
Male rescue workers working near the site of a badly damaged building.Trees in the background.
Ukrainian authorities say a six-year-old boy is among those killed.()

Ukrainian officials say a Russian attack on a village in the north-east of the country killed 51 people and injured at least six more, in one of the deadliest attacks in recent months.

Presidential Chief of Staff Andrii Yermak and Governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov, said Russian forces shelled a shop and a cafe in the village of Hroza on Thursday, in the area at around 1pm local time.

A six-year-old boy was among those killed in the attack, Mr Syniehubov said, and one child was also among the wounded.

"The rescuers continue to work on the site," he said on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukraine's Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said residents of the small village of about 330 people had been holding a memorial service in the cafe that was hit.

About 60 people were in the cafe, Mr Klymenko said. 

"From every family, from every household, there were people present at this commemoration. This is a terrible tragedy," he told Ukrainian television.

He also said Russia had used an Iskander missile in the attack, which is one of the deadliest attacks against civilians during the war.

Explosions rocked several Ukrainian cities in late September, when a Russian attack killed at least two people and injured 21. Earlier that month, 17 people were killed and at least 32 injured in a missile strike in Ukraine's east.

Emergency workers search the victims of the deadly Russian rocket attack.
Emergency workers search for bodies of the victims of the deadly Russian missile attack.(AP: Ukrainian Police Press Office )

In January, a Russian missile hit an apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro and killed 45 people.

And the deadliest attack came in March of 2022 when the Mariupol theatre was bombed, killing hundreds.

On Thursday officials posted footage of rescue workers clambering through smouldering rubble. Bodies lay alongside slabs of concrete and twisted metal.

"The terrorists deliberately carried out the attack during lunchtime, to ensure a maximum number of casualties," Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said.

"There were no military targets there. This is a heinous crime intended to scare Ukrainians."

A man clambers over rubble in Ukraine.
The buildings struck in Hroza were decimated.(Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office/Handout via Reuters)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is attending a summit with European leaders in Spain, denounced the attack as a "demonstrably brutal Russian crime" and "a completely deliberate act of terrorism".

He urged Western allies to help strengthen Ukraine's air defences, saying that "Russian terror must be stopped".

"Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for only one thing: to make its genocidal aggression the new norm for the whole world," he said.

"Now we are talking with European leaders, in particular, about strengthening our air defense, strengthening our soldiers, giving our country protection from terror. And we will respond to the terrorists."

Russia has frequently carried out air strikes since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and Ukraine has launched a counteroffensive in the south and east that it says is gradually making progress.

Moscow did not immediately comment on the events in Hroza. Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians, but many have been killed in attacks that have hit residential areas as well as energy, defence, port, grain and other facilities.

Speaking after the Hroza attack in his yearly speech to the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his position that Russia did not start the war in Ukraine but launched what it calls a "special military operation" to try to stop it.

AP/Reuters

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