UPDATE: Bodies of 47 Victims Removed from Rubble in Chasiv Yar, Ukraine

The death toll from a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the town of Chasiv Yar, Donetsk region, has reached 47,
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, has confirmed in a Telegram post.

Dozens of deaths and numerous injuries were reported on Saturday, July 9, after a series of uragan rockets fired by Russian forces hit a five-storey apartment building in the town, which has an estimated population of 12,000 people.

“We ran to the basement, there were three hits, the first somewhere in the kitchen,” a resident, Ludmila, 24, told Reuters. “The second, I do not even remember, there was lightning, we ran towards the second entrance and then straight into the basement. We sat there all night until this morning.”

On the morning of the incident, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk Region, predicted on Telegram that “more than 24 people” could be trapped under the rubble of the apartment block, as rescue operations were still under way. However, so far emergency efforts have led to the retrieval of almost double that figure in deceased residents alone.

“At 09:48 on July 13, the body of one more victim was removed from the rubble of a destroyed building in Chasiv Yar,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, said in a Telegram post this morning, Wednesday July 13. “In total, since the beginning of rescue works, the bodies of 47 dead people, including a child, have been found and removed from the scene. Nine people have been rescued from the rubble. Rescue works are underway.”

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