60 die in school attack
Horror unfolds during Jill Biden visit as nation braces for ‘Victory Day’ blitz
KYIV: Up to 60 civilians are believed to have been killed in a Russian airstrike on a village school in eastern Ukraine, as the country steeled itself for a barrage of offensives to mark Moscow’s “Victory Day” parade on Monday.
Some 90 people had sought refuge in the school buildings at Bilohorivka, near the focal point of Russia’s redoubled onslaught on Donbas.
On Saturday, local time, the complex was hit by a bomb
that started a fire which raged for four hours, according to Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of the Luhansk region. By Sunday only 30 or so survivors had emerged from the ruins.
“Unfortunately, the bodies of two people were found,” Mr Gaidai wrote on Telegram.
“Thirty people were evacuated from the rubble, seven of whom were injured. Sixty people were likely to have died under the rubble.”
The horror unfolded as US First Lady Jill Biden made an unannounced visit to Ukraine on Sunday, meeting her Ukrainian counterpart Olena Zelenska at a school sheltering civilians displaced by the war.
“I wanted to come on Mother’s Day,” Mrs Biden said.
“I thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people that this war has to stop and this war has been brutal, and that the people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine.”
Mrs Zelenska thanked her “for this very courageous act”.
“We understand what it takes for the US First Lady to come here during a war when the military actions are taking place every day, where the air sirens are happening every day, even today,” she said.
The Ukrainians were bracing themselves to fend off intense attacks as the Kremlin tries to win a breakthrough in time for its vast annual military parade in Moscow commemorating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.
Denouncing Russia’s shelling of Ukrainian homes and the strike on the school, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address: “Russia has forgotten everything that was important to the victors of the Second World War.”
The anniversary of the Third Reich’s surrender has also stirred up ghosts of the past in Germany, where pro and anti-russian protesters marched through Berlin to mark the “day of liberation” from Nazi rule in May 1945.