By Iryna Nazarchuk
ODESA (Reuters) – At least five people including a three-year-old child were killed and others feared still trapped under rubble when a Russian drone hit an apartment block in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa on Saturday, authorities said.
At the scene, smoke poured from rubble strewn across the ground where the drone had ripped a chunk several storeys high out of the building.
“My husband quickly ran out to help people … then I saw people running out and I understood people had died in there,” said Svitlana Tkachenko, who lives in a neighbouring building.
Clothes and furniture were scattered in the ruined mass of concrete and steel hanging off the side of the apartment block.
“Russia continues to fight civilians … One of the enemy drones hit a residential building in Odesa. Eighteen apartments were destroyed,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Telegram post.
Ukraine’s State Emergencies Service posted photos including of a dead toddler being placed in a body bag by rescuers.
“This is impossible to forget! This is impossible to forgive,” it wrote. It said five people including a child had been rescued alive.
Odesa region governor Oleh Kiper said eight people were wounded, and rescuers were still looking for more people under the debris.
According to Zelenskiy, the drone was a Shahed supplied by Iran. Russia has launched several thousand of these long-range winged drones throughout the war at targets deep inside Ukraine.
(Reporting by Iryna Nazarchuk in Odesa and Max Hunder in Kyiv, writing by Max Hunder,; Editing by Jason Neely, Peter Graff and Giles Elgood)
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