Guided bombs hit Kharkiv's Slobidskyi district: six killed, 59 injured

What happened

On Monday, 5 October, the Russian army struck Kharkiv’s Slobidskyi district with guided aerial bombs. According to the Interior Ministry, as cited by Ukrainska Pravda, there were hits on civilian businesses and near a residential high-rise. Two large fires broke out in a warehouse and a production building, and apartment blocks and cars were damaged in the residential area.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov told Suspilne that Russia used three guided bombs. The strikes damaged more than 30 apartment blocks, as many private houses, warehouses and a car-repair shop where people were trapped under the rubble. “The search and rescue operation is ongoing; there are people under the rubble at the car-repair shop,” Terekhov said.

The toll rose throughout the day

Initial reports spoke of one person killed and ten injured. By the afternoon Terekhov was reporting three dead and 29 injured, including three children and a street cleaner. He also reported a separate drone strike on a petrol station in the city’s Kyivskyi district.

In the evening, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov reported 59 people injured. “Thirty-five people suffered blast injuries; the rest have cuts and lacerations, glass injuries, bruises and acute stress reactions,” he said. Among the injured are three children: an 11-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy suffered blast injuries, and a 15-year-old girl had an acute stress reaction. Thirty of the injured remained in hospital, three of them in an extremely serious condition. Later, Syniehubov said rescuers had found the body of a sixth victim.

Voices from the impact area

Suspilne spoke to residents of the damaged buildings. Viktoriia Horniak was at home with her daughter when the bomb hit. Running out of her flat, she saw her injured neighbours and called an ambulance for them right there in the stairwell. “I said hello to them this morning, I didn’t expect this. But it’s good that I was next to my daughter, that’s the most important thing,” she said.

Rescuers brought Olha Kypytska, her mother and their dog out through the ground floor: the blast wave had blown out the door of their flat. Vitalii Baranov, who was in his third-floor flat, said that at first he did not understand what had happened, and when he looked out “there was nothing left to look out of – the windows were gone”. His granddaughter was in a school shelter nearby at the time and was not hurt.

Attacks across the region

The strike on Slobidskyi district was not the only one that day. According to the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office, Russian attacks elsewhere in the region killed one more person and injured 20. At around 13:00 Russian forces shelled Chuhuiv with a Tornado-S multiple rocket launcher, damaging houses and cars and injuring 12 people. In the village of Raivka in Kupiansk district an 85-year-old woman was killed and two other residents were wounded. FPV drones repeatedly attacked cars on the Zolochiv–Derhachi road, and in Kharkiv’s Kyivskyi district a drone wounded a 47-year-old man.

Why it matters

The 5 October strike once again hit an ordinary city neighbourhood: apartment blocks, warehouses, a car-repair shop and a petrol station. Among the victims were children, a street cleaner and neighbours who were simply at home. Rescuers worked at the scene until late in the evening, and according to city and regional authorities the number of casualties kept rising throughout the day.