by Max Hunder
KHARKIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Russian strikes on a crowded DIY store in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday killed 14 people, injured 43 and caused a massive fire, regional officials said.
Oleh Syniehubov, Kharkiv regional governor, said on national television that two homing bombs hit the hypermarket in a residential area of the city.
This assessment is only provisional because 16 people are still missing, declared Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko on the Telegram messaging application.
The mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, said for his part that around 120 people – customers and employees – were in the store at the time of the strikes.
“The attack targeted the shopping center, where a lot of people were – it’s clearly terrorism,” added the mayor of Ukraine’s second city, the target of Russian attacks for many weeks.
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky has appealed to Ukraine’s Western allies to help the country strengthen its air defenses to ensure the security of the country’s cities.
In a video message recorded in English in Kharkiv, from the site of another Russian strike on Thursday, he called on US and Chinese Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping to attend his peace summit.
Ukraine hopes to bring as many countries as possible to the talks it will hold in Switzerland next month to try to unite world opinion on ways to stop the war and increase pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was not invited.
Volodimir Zelensky added that more than 80 countries would be represented.
On the social network X, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the attack. “Russian strikes on a shopping center in Kharkiv have just caused numerous victims. Children, women, men. Families. This is unacceptable,” he wrote.
Early Saturday evening, a missile also struck a residential building in the city center, injuring 25 people, according to a new report established Sunday morning.
(With Olena Harmash, Gilles Guillaume for the French version)
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