Five people, including three young children, have been killed in the latest overnight Russian attacks on Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, as United States-led efforts to end the nearly four-year war continue to progress at a slow, bogged-down pace.
The Ukrainian leader said on Wednesday that a Russian drone had struck a private family home in the town of Bohodukhiv in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region late on Tuesday, killing four and injuring their pregnant mother, the sole survivor.
The Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office said the strike completely destroyed the house, trapping the family beneath the rubble.
It said three children were killed – twin boys aged two and their one-year-old sister – along with their father, 34.
The children’s mother, who is 35 weeks pregnant, was pulled alive from the rubble by rescue teams, suffering from blast injuries, a traumatic brain injury, burns and hearing loss, prosecutors said
Images released by Ukraine’s emergency service showed firefighters battling a blaze in a destroyed house, with smoke rising through the beams of the shattered roof.
Volodymyr Bielyi, the mayor of Bohodukhiv, about 22km (14 miles) from the Russian border, announced on Facebook that the town would observe three days of mourning.
“We have lost what is most precious – our future,” he said.
“There are no words to console the family; there is no prayer that could heal the heart of a mother who has lost her children,” he said.
Kharkiv’s regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said the family had been attacked during their first night in the house, after having moved to the town in an attempt to escape constant Russian shelling.
The mother was released from hospital after receiving treatment for her injuries and minor burns, he said.
