Residents of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region are sifting through the rubble of their homes after Russian strikes hit the city center for the first time in a month.
At least six strikes devastated a residential area and a building just down the street from the administrative center.
At least 25 people were wounded and six were taken to hospital after the strikes in the early hours of Thursday morning, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of Donetsk regional military administration.
In the courtyard of a five-story residential complex, a large munition hit a water and sewage facility, leaving a three-meter-deep crater.
The resulting shockwave stripped trees of their branches and laid ruin to the surrounding buildings, pulling windows from their frames and ripping through apartments from front to back.
One resident, Lyudmyla, told CNN’s Sam Kiley:
I just got lucky. I went to the bathroom, I heard a bang, I sat down on the bed, and it hit me. And all the furniture fell down. It’s a good thing we’re still alive.”
Some context: The last time a Russian strike hit the Kramatorsk city center on April 8, at least 50 people were killed and nearly 300 wounded when a missile hit the city’s main railway station.
The Russian military is trying to advance from the north on the main population in Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
