Dozens of Ukrainian emergency workers worked Sunday to pull people out of the rubble after a Russian rocket attack hit apartment buildings in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 15 people. More than 20 people are believed to remain trapped. The strike late on Saturday destroyed three buildings in a residential district of Chasiv Yar city, mostly inhabited by people who work in nearby factories. On Sunday night, rescuers managed to remove enough of the bricks and concrete to free a man who had been trapped for nearly 24 hours. Paramedics put him on a stretcher and he was rushed to the hospital. Ukraine’s Emergency Services said the latest rescue brought to six the number of people dug from the rubble. Earlier in the day, they made contact with three others still trapped alive under the rubble. Pavlo Kirilenko, governor of the Donetsk region that includes Chasiv Yar, said an estimated 24 people were still trapped, including a 9-year-old child. Cranes and excavators worked alongside rescue teams to clear the rubble of a building, its walls completely sheared off by the impact of the attack. The pounding of artillery on the nearby front line echoed just a few miles away, causing some workers to flinch and others to run for cover. Valerii, who gave only his first name, was desperate to hear from his sister and 9-year-old nephew, who lived in the collapsed building, and had not returned his calls since Saturday night. “Now I’m waiting for a miracle,” he said, as he stood in front of the ruins and began to pray, hands tightly clasped together. “We don’t have good expectations, but I avoid such thoughts,” he said. Kirilenko said the town of about 12,000 people was hit by Uragan rockets fired from truck-based systems. Chasiv Yar is 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Kramatorsk, a city that is a major target for Russian forces as they grind westward. But later Sunday, Viacheslav Boitsov, deputy head of the emergency service in the Donetsk region, told The Associated Press that four shells hit the neighborhood and were likely Iskander missiles. Residents said they heard at least three explosions and that many people were seriously injured in the explosions. A group of neighbors sat in a yard Sunday quietly discussing who was injured and who was still missing. “There was an explosion, all the windows blew out and I was thrown to the ground,” said 45-year-old Oksana, who gave only her first name. She was in her third-floor apartment when the rockets fell. “My kitchen walls and balcony are completely gone,” she added, fighting back tears. “I called my kids to tell them I’m alive.” Irina Shulimova, a 59-year-old pensioner, recalled the horror. “We didn’t hear any sound coming in, we just felt the impact. I ran to hide in the hallway with my dogs. Everyone I knew started calling me to find out what had happened. I was shaking like a leaf,” she said. . Front doors and balconies were torn from the blast, and piles of twisted metal and bricks lay on the ground. Crushed summer cherries were smeared on broken panes. A 30-year-old tech worker named Oleksandr said his mother was among those injured in the blast. “Thank God I wasn’t hurt, it was a miracle,” he said, touching the cross around his neck. Although the home he shares with his mother is now destroyed, he said he has no plans to leave the neighborhood. “I have enough money to support myself for another month. Many people are already tired of the refugees coming from the east — no one will feed us or support us there. It’s better to stay,” said Oleksandr , who declined to give his last name. Another resident who gave only his first name, Dima, had lived for more than 20 years on the ground floor of one of the buildings vacated in the attack. He was pacing back and forth in the ruins. “As you see, my house is gone,” he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russians of deliberately targeting civilians. “Whoever orders such strikes, everyone who carries them out in common cities, in populated areas, is killing absolutely consciously,” he said in a speech to Ukrainians on Sunday night. “After such successes, they will not be able to say that they did not know or did not understand something.” Saturday’s attack was just the latest in a series of raids against civilian areas in the east, even though Russia has repeatedly claimed it only hits targets of military value. Twenty-one people were killed earlier this month when an apartment building and a recreation area were hit by rockets in the southern Odesa region. At least 19 other people were killed when a Russian missile hit a shopping center in the city of Kremenchuk in late June. There was no comment on the Chasiv Yar attack at a Russian Defense Ministry briefing on Sunday. Donetsk region is one of two provinces along with Luhansk that make up the Donbas region, where separatist rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014. Last week, Russia captured the city of Lysychansk, the last major stronghold of the Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk. Russian forces are raising “real hell” in the Donbass, despite estimates that they have taken an operational pause, Luhansk Governor Serhi Haidai said on Saturday. After the capture of Lysychansk, some analysts predicted that Moscow’s troops would likely need some time to rearm and regroup. But “so far no operational pause has been announced by the enemy. It is still attacking and shelling our territories with the same intensity as before,” Haidai said. He later said that Ukrainian forces destroyed some ammunition depots and barracks used by the Russians.
