Kharkiv, Ukraine (Reuters) -Russia may have used a new type of guided bomb in airstrikes on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv that killed at least one person on Wednesday, local officials said.
The officials said four children including a three-month-old baby were among 19 people wounded in Kharkiv in the latest strikes since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, some of which have caused blackouts, including in Kharkiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the attack as “Russian terror” and Volodymyr Tymoshko, head of the Kharkiv regional police, said Moscow may have used a new type of guided bomb which he described as the UMPB D-30.
“This is something between a guided aerial bomb which they (the Russians) have used recently, and a missile. It’s a flying bomb so to say,” Tymoshko said at the site of the strike.
Regional governor Oleh Synehubov also suggested Moscow may have used a new type of bomb, saying: “It seems that the Russians decided to test their modified bombs on the residents of the houses.”
Russia did not immediately comment on their remarks. It denies targeting civilians although the war has killed thousands of people, uprooted millions and destroyed towns and cities.
Two residential buildings and a medical institution were partially destroyed, and a total of 14 buildings, including an educational facility, were damaged, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said on the Telegram messenger.
FREQUENT ATTACKS
Police cordoned off a five-storey residential building that had been hit, its windows blown out and balconies badly damaged.
“It’s a coincidence that we are alive. Some people were unlucky. One person was killed, others have shrapnel wounds,” said Kateryna Velnychuk, who was with her boyfriend in the building when it was hit.
At the scene, a man with a bandaged head sifted through the rubble of a damaged apartment in search of two cats, which he eventually found alive.
A dead body covered with a jacket lay near the entrance to the building.
There was blood on the pavement.
Kharkiv and the surrounding region have frequently been attacked with missiles and drones during more than two years of war, but the use of large-calibre guided bombs is unusual for the city.
“Russian terror against the city is becoming increasingly heinous,” Zelenskiy said on X, and urged Ukraine’s allies to supply more air defences and fighter jets.
“There is no rational explanation for why Patriots (missiles), which are plentiful around the world, are still not covering the skies of Kharkiv and other cities and communities under attack by Russian terrorists,” he said.
