60 feared dead in Russian attack on school
AT LEAST 60 people are feared dead in Ukraine after a Russian missile flattened a school.
Around 90 villagers hiding in the building’s basement were buried alive in saturday night’s attack in Bilohorivka, luhansk.
the blast sparked a fierce blaze that took firefighters more than three hours to put out. Rescuers then managed to pull out 30 people alive, seven of whom were injured.
Officials said there was little chance of finding any more survivors, although they added that the final death toll would be revealed only when the emergency services had cleared the rubble.
the strike came as Moscow’s forces try to seize as much eastern Ukrainian territory as possible ahead of today – May 9, a key date in Russia known as
‘Did not allow them to escape’
Victory Day that marks the country’s second World War successes.
luhansk governor serhiy Haidai said: ‘these were ordinary people who were hiding there because it was the last place in the village where you still had a chance to survive.
‘the basement of the school is the only surviving bomb shelter. But the Russians killed them on purpose. they did not allow them to escape.’
Mr Haidai had earlier written on instant messaging app telegram that ‘the Russian world is synonymous with the word death’.
He added that Russian shelling had also killed two boys, aged 11 and 14, in the nearby town of Pryvillia.
Bilohorivka is close to severodonetsk, the seat of the pro-Kyiv regional administration, where heavy fighting has been reported over the past two days.
Mr Haidai said the Ukrainian army withdrew from luhansk’s embattled city of Popasna yesterday ‘moving to stronger positions, which they had prepared ahead of time’.
‘All free settlements in the luhansk region are hot spots,’ he added.
Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs branded Russia’s shelling of the school as ‘a brutal war crime’.
Foreign secretary liz truss said she was ‘horrified’ by the attack that led to ‘the deaths of innocent people sheltering from Russian bombardment’.
echoing Kyiv’s condemnation of the attack, Miss truss said: ‘Deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure amounts to war crimes. We will ensure Putin’s regime is held accountable.’
the Kremlin has not commented on the accusations, but Moscow has repeatedly denied that it targets civilians, claiming that it wants to destroy military assets only.
luhansk is one of two areas that make up Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland known as the Donbas.
It is where Ukrainian troops and Russia-backed separatists have been locked in fighting since 2014 when Vladimir Putin’s troops first invaded Ukraine.
eight buses carrying 174 civilians from south-eastern Ukraine, including 40 evacuees taken from the Azovstal plant in besieged Mariupol, arrived last night in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.
the 40 were evacuated on saturday from the steelworks, where the last Ukrainian soldiers in the devastated city are holed up in bunkers, surrounded by Russian troops.