According to Kyiv, the residential building was hit by Russian missiles fired from truck systems late Saturday night. Ukrainian emergency services initially put the death toll at 10, but as rescue teams continued to comb through the wreckage that number rose. The latest victim, a nine-year-old boy, was reported to have been found at around 11.30pm on Monday. Ukraine’s interior ministry late on Monday put the death toll at 33, including a child, citing emergency services, but on Tuesday morning the number rose to 34, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region . which includes Chasiv Yar. In an update shared on Telegram shortly before 9 a.m., Kyrylenko said that as of 6:30 a.m., employees of the state emergency service had cleared about 70 percent of the debris, although the rescue operation is ongoing. “The Russians will bear the responsibility for every life destroyed and maimed,” he added. Nine people were rescued in the wake of the attack, while Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region that includes Chasiv Yar, said about three dozen people may remain trapped in the rubble. On Sunday afternoon, rescuers pulled out a man who had been pinned by falling bricks and concrete for nearly 24 hours. Ukraine: Rescue efforts underway after Russian missiles hit apartment building – video Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Moscow of deliberately targeting civilians in the Chasiv Yar attack. “Whoever gives orders for such strikes, who carries them out in ordinary cities, in populated areas, kills completely deliberately,” Zelensky said. “Punishment is inevitable for every Russian murderer.” Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, said the strike was “another terrorist attack” and that Russia should be labeled a state sponsor of terrorism. Rescue teams appeared to clear the wreckage of the building, its walls completely sheared off by the impact. Cranes and excavators worked alongside emergency workers to clear away the debris as front doors and balconies appeared torn away. Rescuers pull a survivor out of a residential building damaged by a Russian military attack in Chasiv Yar. Photo: Gleb Garanich/Reuters The eastern Ukrainian city is mostly populated by people who work in nearby factories. It is the latest blow in a recent spate of high-casualty attacks on residential structures, leaving mass civilian casualties, although Russia claims it is targeting only Ukrainian military operations. Twenty-one people were killed earlier this month when a block of flats and a recreation area came under rocket fire in a small southern coastal town near Odessa. Another 19 people died when a Russian missile hit a busy shopping center in the city of Kremenchuk in late June. At least six people were killed in a Russian rocket attack on Monday morning in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv. Another 31 people, including two children aged four and 16, were injured in the attack, according to Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office. Among the dead were a father and his 17-year-old son, who were driving to pick up his university admission certificate, Ukrainian regional police official Serhiy Bolvinov said. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the shelling hit civilian infrastructure, including a shopping center and a tire repair shop. These are “places that had no military importance”, he added. Chasiv Yar, with a population of 12,000, is about 12 miles southeast of Kramatorsk, a city expected to be the next major target for Russian forces as they push further west towards Donetsk after the victory in neighboring Luhansk province. Authorities are urging people to leave the area. About 80 percent of residents in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region had fled, regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko said Monday. Ukraine has also warned residents in southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to evacuate as it prepares to launch a counter-offensive to retake the region. On Monday, Zelensky asked military chiefs to assemble a fighting force of “millions” equipped with Western weapons to retake his southern territory from Russia, Ukraine’s defense minister said. “The president has instructed the supreme military commander to draw up plans,” Oleksii Reznikov told The Times.
