AFP, published on Sunday, April 17, 2022 at 6:57 PM
Svitlana Pelelygina wanders the street in awe, observing the smoke rising from the ruins of her apartment, hit by one of the bombings that hit the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine on Sunday.
“The whole apartment started to wobble and shake,” the 71-year-old woman told AFP. “And everything started to catch fire.”
“I called the fire brigade. They told me: + we are on the way, but we are also being targeted by strikes +”, she recalls.
In Moscow’s crosshairs ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he was withdrawing his troops from the Kiev region to focus on eastern Ukraine, Kharkiv has faced deadly bombing raids every day.
At least five people were killed and 13 injured in a series of strikes in this city, just 21 kilometers from the Russian border, according to emergency services.
AFP journalists on the ground heard two shelling and saw five fires spread through residential areas in central Kharkov, once famous for its charm.
This city, the second largest in Ukraine, with almost one and a half million inhabitants before the war, has always been under the control of Ukrainian troops.
All administrative buildings were destroyed by Russian strikes.
– Vibrations –
Immediately after the strikes, around 2 p.m. local time (1100 GMT), 33 emergency vehicles and 150 firefighters were sent to more than 15 points in the city, an official said, as pedestrians ran in panic for cover.
“You know how a dog hears a + boom + and starts to vibrate all over its body, even though the sound is far away? That’s how I am now,” says Zinaïda Nestrijenko, 69, who lived in the same building as Ms. Pelelyguina.
With her cat pressed against her stomach, she stands scared on the sidewalk. “Everything in me, every part of me, vibrates.”
The streets are littered with shattered glass and pieces of corrugated iron, ripped from nearby roofs by the explosion.
On every corner of downtown Kharkov, dazed passersby discover a new team of firefighters, busily pulling out their water hoses and riveting to the hydrants.
Rescuers climb the steps of a giant staircase, then open a door with an angle grinder to access the roof of a building pierced by a strike.
Through the hole, we see firefighters trying to put out the fire that has seized another house, a stone’s throw from where Svitlana Pelelyguina and Zinaïda Nestrijenko lived.
In this central artery, camel-colored fur lies on the cobblestones, gradually colored by a red pool.
A torrential downpour falls on Kharkov and the blood mixes with the rainwater.
