60 feared dead in school blast
An airstrike on a school in eastern Ukraine serving as a bomb shelter left as many as 60 people buried under rubble and feared dead, Ukrainian officials said, in what may prove to be one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the nearly three-month-old war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces have intensified their push to consolidate more territory in Ukraine.
The attack on the school underscored what US officials describe as the criminal nature of Russia’s military campaign, which they say targets civilians.
About 90 people were hiding in the school basement in the eastern village of Bilohorivka when it was attacked, according to Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the eastern Luhansk region.
Video from what remained of the school showed firefighters digging through the debris as small flames licked the rubble. Rescue workers battled for nearly four hours to extinguish a fire caused by a bomb from a Russian plane, Haidai said.
It was unclear how many people had been inside. Haidai said that 30 people were rescued Saturday, seven of them wounded, and that two bodies were also found in the rubble.
He said it was likely that all 60 people buried under the rubble were dead, although some civilians who were evacuated said about 37 people were sheltering there.
‘‘We’d been inside that basement for a month,’’ said a 57-yearold woman who gave her name as Irena. Her neck and face were swollen. ‘‘We were eating dinner when it happened. We didn’t know what hit us.’’
In the west of the country, which has largely been spared from Russia’s onslaught, United States’ first lady Jill Biden made an unannounced visit, meeting refugees at a processing centre at the Vysne Nemecke crossing near the border with Slovakia.
‘‘I wanted to come on Mother’s Day,’’ said Biden after entering Ukraine. ‘‘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.’’
Biden also met Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska. She praised Biden ‘‘for a very courageous act’’ in coming to Ukraine.
Biden’s visit came amid a fourday swing through Eastern Europe for the first lady, her highestprofile diplomatic engagement since President Joe Biden took office, and it was a rare visit by a president’s spouse to a war zone.
In Kyiv, US diplomats made an initial foray towards reopening the US Embassy, which had been evacuated before the Russian invasion.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also made an unannounced visit to Ukraine to speak with Ukrainian officials and hoist the Canadian flag again over his country’s embassy in Kyiv, nearly three months after it suspended operations. He toured the devastated Kyiv suburb of Irpin, announced an additional $50 million (NZ$78.7m) in military aid and said his country would lift trade tariffs on Ukrainian imports for a year.
Trudeau’s visit came ahead of a virtual conference with other leaders of the Group of Seven countries and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy about ways to support Ukraine.
The G-7 – which includes the nations of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States – committed to phasing out the use of Russian oil and gas, or instituting outright bans.
The G-7 statement didn’t provide a timeline for the bans.
The leaders announced additional sanctions on Russia, including new restrictions on three prominent state-controlled media organisations.
President Biden spoke with the group from his home in Delaware.
The White House announced afterward additional sanctions, including visa restrictions on a wider group of Russian elites.
It also banned Americans from providing accounting, trust formation and management consulting to anyone in Russia.
‘‘These services are key to Russian companies and elites building wealth, thereby generating revenue for Putin’s war machine, and to trying to hide that wealth and evade sanctions,’’ a White House statement said.
In his own commemoration of the victory over the Nazis 77 years earlier, Zelenskyy said publicly that ‘‘evil has returned’’ to Europe.
In an address posted to Telegram, Zelenskyy, standing between two blackened apartment buildings and wearing a T-shirt with the words ‘‘I’m Ukrainian’’ emblazoned on the front, said this year’s remembrance was different because for the first time since World War II, ‘‘monsters’’ have waged another deadly conflict. –