60 feared dead after school bombed in east Ukraine
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine: Some 60 people sheltering in a village school in east Ukraine are feared dead after it was hit by an air strike, the Lugansk regional governor said Sunday.
“Bilogorivka (village) was hit in an air strike on Saturday,” said Sergii Gaidai.
“The bombs fell on the school and unfortunately it was completely destroyed. There were a total of 90 people, 27 were saved,” he said on Telegram. “Sixty people who were in the school are very probably dead.”
Rescuers could not work overnight because of a threat of new strikes, but resumed their work on Sunday.
Rescuers were also looking for survivors in the neighbouring village of Shepilivka after a strike hit a house where 11 people were sheltering in the basement, he said.
Ukraine’s last soldiers in the port city of Mariupol were facing a brutal final showdown Sunday with besieging Russian forces, who are hoping to deliver a critical win ahead of the country’s victory day.
President Volodymyr Zelensky is also set to hold talks with G7 leaders via video conference to discuss the situation in his country, which fears a renewed intensity to Moscow’s offensive after the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks.
The complex – the final pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the devastated port city – has taken on a symbolic value in the war, with the last soldiers holed up in its sprawling network of underground tunnels and bunkers.
Taking full control of Mariupol would allow Moscow to create a land bridge between the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, and regions run by proRussian separatists in the east.