More Russian strikes as Ukraine region mourns scores killed

By Stefan J. Bos

Rescue teams have continued to dig through the rubble, hoping against hope to find survivors.

But only six people were found alive after Thursday's deadly Russian strike hit the sole cafe and store in the village of Hroza.

More than 50 people gathered for a dead soldier’s wake were killed. "There was a reburial for a fighter who had been buried somewhere else before. People gathered for a memorial ceremony. Then a missile struck,” said Hroza villager Oleksandr Mukhovatyi.

“Many people died. My mother, my brother, and my sister-in-law,” he added, fighting back tears.

The first funerals are now underway following three days of mourning as the tragedy impacted all families here.

A female psychologist of the state emergency service accompanied a woman who could barely walk as she mourned her loved ones.

Children injured

There was more sorrow Sunday in other parts of Ukraine, such as in the industrial city of Konstantinivka, where four people, including a nine-year-old girl, were reportedly in a suspected Russian rocket strike.

And a 27-year-old woman and her nine-month-old baby are among those wounded in a Russian attack on the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, said its governor, Oleksandr Prokudin.

He explained that the woman and the infant were hospitalized with moderate wounds while a 33-year-old Red Cross medic was also injured. 

Several houses and gas pipelines were damaged in the attack.

Many more people are being killed and wounded on the battlefields. Kyiv claims some 580 Russian troops have been killed during fighting over the last day, though these figures were complex to verify independently.

Yet military experts say hundreds of thousands of people, many of them soldiers, have been killed or injured since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February last year.