‘Biggest drone attack’ in Odesa kills 6
The war raged on in Ukraine as a Russian missile hit a residential building in Odesa yesterday, killing six people.
Sunday Times, which was on the scene, witnessed emergency services retrieving the sixth body of a child.
The Iranian-made drone, believed to have been fired from Crimea, destroyed five floors of the nine-storey building in Kotovskiy Village on the outskirts of Odesa in the early hours of Saturday. Locals describe the village as a working-class area on the north of Odesa.
Among the hundreds of residents who had gathered at the scene was Odesa mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov, who confirmed the death of the sixth person. He described the attack as “the biggest” in the city since the Russian invasion in 2022.
“This is the biggest attack on Odesa,” he said, addressing a group of South African journalists.
“You can see this was a terrorist attack by Russia because there aren’t any military objects around. These people were sleeping peacefully in their flats at night.”
The youngest casualty was a three-month old baby. Trukhanov said the baby was found embraced by his dead mother on her chest.
It wasn’t clear how many people were wounded but 13 were reported missing, among them four children, he said, speaking through an interpreter.
“This is a crime against the people. Unfortunately it’s not the first hit or the first lives who died after a Russian attack.”
Emergency services were working around the clock removing rubble and looking for survivors.
“We are trying to do everything fast. We are trying to reconstruct these ruins and to help the people. We can do almost everything for our people but we cannot return the lives of the small children who died,” said Trukhanov.
Putting on a brave face, the mayor said Odesa would be Russia’s next target or destroyed by the superpower, but he confirmed the Ukrainian defence did not have enough ammunition and aircraft to defend the country. Svitlana Karnitsova, a 26-year-old teacher, and her mother, also Svitlana, told the Sunday Times they were sleeping in their first-floor flat during the attack. “I went to bed at 12 [midnight] and I was woken up by the explosion at 1am,” said Karnitsova. “We ran to the corridor but it was foggy.”
Viktor Bromchatov, 67, who lives in a neighbouring district broke down in tears during our interview. He was at the scene to bring soup to the survivors. Bromchatov said he wanted to help because he had experienced a similar missile attack at the building he’s staying in 2022. Asked whether he believes a solution would be found to stop the war, he became tearful and couldn’t continue with the interview.