Ukraine’s military has said that Russian forces struck a boarding school housing people preparing for evacuation in a part of Russia’s Kursk region held by Ukrainian forces, killing at least four people.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack had destroyed the boarding school in the border town of Sudzha, “even though dozens of civilians were there”.
A statement by the Ukrainian military’s general staff on Saturday said that, as of 10pm (8pm GMT), rescue efforts to clear rubble were proceeding.
Four people had been killed and 84 had been rescued or received medical assistance, the statement said. Four of the injured were in a serious condition.
Reuters could not independently verify the Ukrainian account.
Russia blamed Kyiv for the deadly strike. “On February 1, the Ukrainian Armed Forces committed another war crime by launching a targeted missile strike on a boarding school in the city of Sudzha,” said a statement from Russia’s defence ministry.
Zelenskyy, writing in English on X, said the attack exposed Russia as “a state devoid of civility”.
“This is how Russia wages war: Sudzha, Kursk region, Russian territory, a boarding school with civilians preparing to evacuate,” Zelenskyy wrote. “A Russian aerial bomb. They destroyed the building even though dozens of civilians were there … This is how Russia waged war against Chechnya decades ago. They killed Syrians the same way. Russian bombs destroy Ukrainian homes the same way.“
A military spokesperson, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, had earlier said in a video posted on Facebook that nearly 100 people were under rubble at the site, which he said had housed mostly elderly and infirm people.
At least one unofficial Russian military blogger said Ukrainian forces were behind the strike.
Ukrainian forces have held swathes of the Kursk region since staging a major cross-border incursion last August.
Earlier on Saturday Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles on Ukraine, killing 15 people and damaging dozens of residential buildings as well as energy infrastructure across the country, Ukrainian officials said.
In the central city of Poltava, Ukraine’s emergency services said a Russian missile had struck a residential building, killing 11 people and wounding 16, including four children.
They said 22 people were rescued from rubble and emergency crews worked well into the night. Rescue teams carried out the dead on stretchers.
Reuters TV footage showed thick columns of smoke rising from mounds of rubble outside the building, part of which was reduced to a twisted mass of metal and building materials.
Firefighters and dozens of rescuers were searching through rubble and carrying the dead out on stretchers.
In Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s north-east, one person was killed and four were wounded in a drone attack, the mayor said.
Three police officers were killed during the attacks as they patrolled streets in a village in the north-eastern region of Sumy, regional officials said.
