Six dead, 59 hurt as Russian bombs shatter Kharkiv apartment blocks

Russian bombs struck a residential area of Ukraine's northeastern city of Kharkiv on Monday, killing six people, injuring nearly 60 and shattering apartment buildings, Ukrainian officials said. Oleh Syniehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region, said on Telegram that three bombs had hit different areas of the city. Fifty-nine people were injured, 30 of them being treated in hospital, three in a serious condition. Three of the injured were children. Mayor Ihor Terehov said emergency crews had recovered three bodies from the rubble. Facades and balconies on residential buildings were badly damaged and apartments inside smashed. Rescue workers led stunned residents out of the buildings, guiding them past piles of debris. 'We saw two wounded neighbours covered in blood,' resident Viktoriia Nahornyak told Reuters Television over the wail of an air raid siren. 'I only grabbed my documents and went outside in the clothes I am wearing right now.' One resident was found dead in his bed. Another body lay on the ground, covered with a blanket. Warehouses were also damaged in the strike. Kharkiv, 30 kilometres from the Russian border, is Ukraine's second-largest city. It has withstood sustained Russian attacks since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022 and has suffered considerable damage, yet it remains a functioning city, where bombs now fall on ordinary residential streets. Elsewhere, a Russian drone struck an apartment building in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, triggering a fire and injuring three people who were initially trapped on the building's ninth floor, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said. And in Sloviansk, one of several front-line cities in the Donetsk region that Russian forces aim to capture in their slow advance through the Donbas, Russian air strikes killed one person. The attacks came as the war grinds on, with civilians in Ukraine's cities continuing to pay the heaviest price. Monday's strike was a reminder that distance from the front line offers no safety: Kharkiv sits far behind the fiercest fighting, yet its apartment blocks are the war's front line.