Russian forces struck the Central Market in Lozova, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, with a Shahed drone and a Banderol missile on Thursday, Oct. 22, killing two women and wounding 36 others.
Head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration Oleh Syniehubov earlier identified the two women killed as aged 50 and 60. They were the only fatalities reported so far.
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In his latest update, he said the number of people affected by the strike had risen to 36, with two of those treated only for acute stress reactions. The wounds of other 34 people range in severity, although all received necessary medical care. Some of them were hospitalized in severe condition, with doctors fighting for their lives, Lozova Mayor Serhii Zelenskyi said.
“This was a deliberate, targeted strike on civilians” Zelenskyi said, noting that the market had been struck during the midday, around lunch time, while it was crowded.
“The occupiers aimed specifically at civilians to cause as many casualties as possible. At an ordinary market, where everything is in plain sight, there never were and never could be any military targets,” he continued.
The strike caused extensive damage to market pavilions, private houses, apartment buildings, nearby shopping centers, a church and private vehicles.
Local authorities are still assessing the full damage, they said.
Emergency and municipal services switched to mass-casualty response mode, Zelenskyi previously said, warning that the threat of repeated strikes remained and urged residents to head to shelters immediately whenever an air raid alert sounded.
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The number of casualties climbed steadily after the attack. Syniehubov initially reported 17 injured shortly after the strike, a figure Zelenskyi also gave in his preliminary update.
Around the same time on Thursday, Russian forces struck a private house in the Zhytomyr community with a jet-powered Shahed drone, leaving eight people wounded, including two children.
In Sloviansk, regional authorities have extended mandatory evacuation of families with children to the entire community after Russian forces struck the settlements of the Donetsk region 42 times on Wednesday, Oct. 21, injuring two boys aged seven and 12.
The attack on the community came around the same time Russian forces used an FPV drone to strike an armored evacuation vehicle of the Proliska Humanitarian Mission near Kramatorsk, also located in the Donetsk region.
Although strikes on civilians, civilian sites and organizations are strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law, Russian forces completely destroyed the vehicle in what marked the 120th time that the humanitarian organization has been attacked since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
During the same week, on Monday, Oct. 19, Russia struck a crowded park in Nova Vodolaha, Kharkiv region with a drone, killing six people, including two children.
The youngest victim, a little girl just over a year old, was killed while sitting in her stroller.
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