More than 10 killed in deadly Russian strike on Ukraine's Kharkiv DIY store
The death toll from a Russian strike on a hardware superstore in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv rose to 11 Sunday, the regional governor said, with President Volodymyr Zelensky condemning the attack as "vile".
"Unfortunately, the death toll at 'Epitsentr' has increased to 11 people," Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram, referring to the store hit on Saturday.
Earlier, he said six people had "died on the spot", 40 were wounded and 16 were missing after two guided Russian bombs hit the store.
Two of those killed "were men who worked in the hypermarket", Synegubov said in a video on Telegram.
Thick black smoke billowed from the gutted building of the Epitsentr DIY superstore in the northeastern outskirts of the city, as firefighters sprayed water on a blaze sparked by the strikes, AFP journalists saw.
The Epitsentr chain sells household and DIY goods.
Still wearing her uniform, Lyubov, a cleaner at the hypermarket, told how she escaped the building.
"It happened all of a sudden. We didn't understand at first, everything went dark and everything started falling on our heads," she said.
"It was good that my phone lit up, thanks to the flashlight I found where to go, but in front of us everything was burning already."
"As of now, we know that more than 200 people could have been inside the hypermarket," Zelensky said on Telegram, condemning the daylight attack on an "obviously civilian" target.
"France shares the pain of the Ukrainians and remains fully mobilised alongside them," he said.
Read more on FRANCE 24 English
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