Russian missile hit a five-story residential building in the city of Chasiv Yar, killing at least 15 people and leaving 34 trapped under rubble, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
Three dozen people are still under the rubble, including a child, while five others have been rescued following the partial collapse of the building near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast, according to the rescue services.
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Pavlo Kyrylenko, the Donetsk region's governor, pointed out that the strike took place on Saturday evening in Chasiv Yar, a town of some 12,000 inhabitants.
The Ukrainian officials initially gave a death toll of six, but later said it had risen to 10 before the latest toll of 15.
AFP reporters who arrived at the scene after the overnight strike said the building partially collapsed, adding that rescue workers and an excavator were working to clear the area.
"There is a chance of finding them," he told AFP. "They have enough air, they can breathe. They tell us they are waiting to be rescued."
On Saturday, Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said Russian forces were managing to “raise true hell” in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Moscow had barely gotten started in Ukraine and dared the West to try to defeat it on the battlefield.
Putin affirmed that the West hadn’t succeeded in sowing discord or wreaking havoc in Russia, adding that it wouldn’t be able to do so in the future.
“Obviously, they were trying not only to hit the Russian economy harder. Their goal was to sow discord and wreak havoc in our society, to demoralize people,” the Russian leader noted. “But they miscalculated there: It did happen, and I’m sure it won’t.”