Ukraine slams ‘horrific' strikes on Kyiv amid Russian advance
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Loading... - Charlotte Reid
- 25 Feb 2022
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Invading Russian forces are pressing deep into Ukraine as deadly battles reach the outskirts of Kyiv, with explosions heard in the capital that the besieged government has described as “horrific rocket strikes”.
The blasts in Kyiv early on Friday set off a second day of violence after Russian President Vladimir Putin defied Western warnings and unleashed a full-scale ground invasion and air assault that quickly killed dozens of people and displaced at least 100,000.
“Horrific Russian rocket strikes on Kyiv,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter on Friday.
“Last time our capital experienced anything like this was in 1941 when it was attacked by Nazi Germany”.
Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to the interior minister, wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had downed an enemy aircraft, which crashed into a nine-storey residential building and set it on fire. It was unclear whether the aircraft was manned.
A series of explosions were heard in Kyiv earlier which Herashchenko said were the sounds of air defences firing at the aircraft.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Kyiv, says the situation in the capital is “horrific and horrendous” with a “litany of air raids overnight”, and that at least one person had been killed when the downed aircraft crashed in a residential area.
“There have also been a large number of air raids since dawn, on three occasions the air raid sirens have gone off and a civilian area was struck by one of those raids,” he said. “The hospitals are struggling with the number of casualties right now … however the civilian number of casualties is not clear.”
“This is escalating in every respect – not just in the air but on the ground as well, there are armoured [Russian] columns all heading towards the city,” he added.
The explosions took place as many of the capital’s residents had taken shelter deep underground in metro stations. People brought sleeping bags and blankets, dogs and crossword puzzles to pass an uneasy night in the makeshift bomb shelters.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko had called on the city’s three million people to stay indoors unless they worked in critical sectors and said everyone should prepare go-bags with necessities such as medicine and documents.
Simmons said air raid sirens sometimes do not give much warning for people to take shelter. Read More...
