Ukraine says that at least 18 civilians are killed in strikes

The Ukrainian authorities said on Sunday that two air attacks a day before had killed at least 18 civilians, one of the highest day tolls so far this year and a gloomy reminder of the lasting devastation of the custom war that approaches his fourth year.

The first strike occurred on Saturday morning when a Russian missile arrived at a residential building in the city of Poltava de Ukray, almost 150 miles from the first line, killing at least 14 people, including two children, according to local services emergency The videos from the sequelae of the attack showed a section of the building reduced to the rubble, with clothing and documents scattered throughout the area.

A few hours later, the Ukrainian authorities said that a Russian bomb had crashed into a boarding school in Sudzha, a city in western Russia that is under Ukrainian control, killing four people.

The Russian Ministry of Defense guilty Kyiv for the deadly blow in Sudzha and did not approach the attack against Poltava. The statements of any of the parties could be verified independently.

Ukrainian officials said that some 90 Russian civilians displaced by nearby fighting had been taking refuge in school when the attack occurred. Oleksiy Dmytrashkivkyi, a military spokesman in the area, said in the text messages that four of those people had been killed and 10 wounds.

“They destroyed the building despite the fact that dozens of civilians were there,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky from Ukraine on Saturday night in a publication on social networksemphasizing that those were the “own civilians” of Russia. He shared images of the ruins and people covered with dust, visibly shaken by the attack.

Sudzha, a small town near the Ukrainian border in the western region of Kursk in Russia, was captured by kyiv’s forces during a cross -border assault last summer and has since been occupied by Ukraine.

Saturday’s attacks, surprising skills, both close and far from the front line and killing people from both nations at war, underlined the brutal toll of the war against civilians. Since Russia’s invasion began almost three years ago, more than 12,300 civilians have been killed, a UN official reported Just before Christmas.

The United Nations noticed a strong increase in victims last year due to the use of long -range drones, missiles and sliding pumps capable of achieving distant objectives. The cities once considered relatively safe, such as Lviv, in western Ukraine and Poltava, now face frequent attacks. In kyiv, the buzz of the Russian drones that fly above the head now resonates regularly during the night.

Denys Kliap, the director of Free and Unbreakable, a voluntary emergency response team in Poltava, said that he and his colleagues rushed to the attack site as soon as explosions heard, finding a lot of debris and a residential building over fire. “I heard incredible screams of the people,” he recalled. “People groaned from under the rubble, shouting for help.”

When he approached the remains of the building, Mr. Kliap, 26, found himself with the torn body of a woman in the rubble. Inside, a colleague found another woman with an open wound, bleeding strongly. Other residents were in shock, he said.

Photographs Emergency services showed that several floors of the building had collapsed. Some apartment rooms were miraculously intact, their doors opened to the void left by a neighboring neighbor. The clothes hung in a vacuum, suspended in steel bars and cables.

On Sunday morning, Ukrainian emergency services were still looking through the debris left by the missile strike the day before. They said they had rescued 22 people. Mr. Kliap, speaking by phone from the site, said that the relatives of the residents had gathered there, waiting for survivors.

“But rescuers often only find corpses,” he said.

The strike in Poltava revived the memories of a previous attack, in September, in a military academy that killed 50 people, many of them students. The Russian missiles had arrived at the Academy only minutes after the seizure alarms sounded. “For the last year, the feeling of danger among citizens of Poltava has increased,” said Kliap.

The Ukrainian authorities have urged their western partners to supply more missiles and aerial defense systems to protect Ukrainian cities. “We need better protection: air defense systems, long -range weapons and penalty pressure,” Mr. Zelensky He said SundayNoting that last week, Russia had launched almost 50 missiles, 660 attack drones and more than 760 planning pumps.

Russian civilians have also been found increasing Within Russia.

Thousands of civilians were caught in the first days of the fight, and many have remained in the area controlled by Ukraine since then. As Russian forces have gradually advanced with assaults to claim their lands, the continuous battles have placed civilians in great danger.

Yurii Syvala Contributed reports.