A strike that killed 23 people far from any frontlines has forced residents to understand that one could come anywhere
Huddled under a blanket, Iryna Babii turned away from the empty space where, until Friday, nine floors of apartments had been stacked, one of them home to her daughter’s best friend.
“Flames from the missile seemed to reach across the courtyard. I thought my own apartment was on fire. I just grabbed my daughter and ran down the stairs. Outside there was a woman screaming in a voice that didn’t seem human: ‘There are children in there, there are children in there.’”The strike killed 23 people, including a baby boy, and injured nine more.
“Fifty metres from here there is a school, and two kindergartens. Really ‘strategic objectives’,” said one of Babii’s workmates at a local museum, who had come to give her moral support, mixing grief for the dead with anger at the attack. Strikes like this are one reason why many Ukrainians have fled even peaceful parts of the country. Missile fragments from the same Friday morning raid that targeted Uman alsoand her mother on the outskirts of Dnipro city, in a rural area they moved to for safety after a similar missile strike on an apartment block there.
Neighbourhood pathways had been swept clear of broken glass, and empty window frames in other buildings filled with plastic sheeting. The police had set up a DNA testing centre, to identify badly damaged remains.“Classroom six at the school for giving DNA samples,” a police officer with a loudhailer told the crowd that had gathered in the courtyard to mourn, or perhaps just to try to understand their losses.
The World Food Kitchen nonprofit provided meals, the Red Cross mixed with medics, firefighters and police. There were tents to shelter survivors, piles of clothes neatly sorted in the school and bags of food, although Svitlana, one of the volunteers organising the donations, said no one was taking much.
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