This story was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty:
URL: https://www.rferl.org
This story has not been altered or edited.
(C) RFE/RL.  Used here by permission.
------------



Anyone can die at any time: Indiscriminate attacks by Russian forces in Kharkiv, Ukraine

[]

Date: 2022-06-12 23:01:00+00:00

Cluster munitions strikes Russian forces have repeatedly launched devasting and indiscriminate strikes using internationally banned cluster bombs on populated residential areas, killing and injuring scores of civilians. In barrage after barrage, men, women and children have been killed

and injured in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and cemeteries, while queueing for humanitarian aid or shopping for food. At least nine civilians were killed and more than 35 injured — including several children — when Russian forces rained down cluster munitions in and around Myru Street in the Industrialnyi neighbourhood, southeast of the city centre. The attack took place on the afternoon of 15 April 2022, and it blasted an area of over 700 square metres. Doctors at City Clinical Hospital 25 told Amnesty International that 31 injured people were brought to the hospital, two of whom died of their wounds, in addition to seven people who were killed on the spot. Several other wounded civilians were reportedly taken to other hospitals.14 The injuries doctors saw included penetrating wounds to the abdomen, chest and back. Doctors showed Amnesty International metal fragments they had removed from patients’ bodies, which matched the types of pre-formed pellets found in 9N210/9N235 cluster munitions -- weapons that have been repeatedly used by Russian forces.15 Some of the victims were killed or injured in the courtyards between buildings, others in the surrounding streets and nearby parks.

© Amnesty International A doctor shows cluster munitions fragments which were removed from the body of one of the people injured in the cluster bomb attack on Myru Street on 15 April. © Amnesty International Burnt cars where cluster munitions exploded, killing and injuring several residents in the playground of this housing complex in Myru Street on 15 April.

Tetiana Ahayeva, a 53-year-old nurse, told Amnesty International that she was standing by the entrance of her building with some neighbours enjoying the warm sunshine – a welcome break from long spells in the basement shelter – when several cluster bombs exploded near her:



There was a sudden sound of firecrackers everywhere, lots of them, all over. I saw puffs of black smoke where the explosions occurred. We dropped to the ground and tried to find cover. Our neighbour’s son, a 16-year-old boy called Artem Shevchenko, was killed on the spot. He had a hole 1 cm wide in his chest. His father had a shattered hip and a shrapnel wound in his leg. It’s hard to say how long the explosions lasted; a minute can seem to last forever. As soon as the explosions stopped we tried to get to our building. My son said he felt weak so my neighbor helped him inside. Tetiana Ahayeva

Tetiana Ahayeva’s 18-year-old son Ilkham sustained deep abdominal injuries. Doctors at the hospital showed Amnesty International two metal pellets that they had removed from Ilham’s abdomen. These pellets match the longer 4.5 gram pellets found in 9N235 cluster munitions. Another neighbour, Bohdan Burlutsky, age 28, was injured as he parked his car in front of his building across the road, where several cluster munitions exploded all over the courtyard, setting several cars on fire and injuring other neighbours.

©Amnesty International Ilham Agayev, injured in the Cluster bomb strike on Myru St ©Amnesty International Bohdan Burlutskyi , injured in the cluster bomb strike on Myru St

Another resident of the building, Oleh, told Amnesty International that his neighbour Oleksandr Hamara, age 35, who had recently moved to the building, was among those killed in the yard.

In the nearby playground off Myru Street, Oksana Litvynyenko, a 41-year-old mother of two, suffered devastating injuries when several cluster munitions exploded near where she was walking with her husband and their four-year-old daughter. Shrapnel penetrated her back, chest and abdomen, puncturing her lungs and damaging her spine. Oksana tragically died on 11 June. Her husband Ivan Litvynyenko, age 40, told Amnesty International on 26 April 16:



We were in the playground; it was about 4pm and there were many other families with children around. Municipal workers were also there, cleaning and gardening. All of a sudden I saw a flash, like the sparkling flash which happens when welding metal. I grabbed my daughter and pushed her against the tree and hugged the tree, so that she was protected between the tree and my body. There was a lot of smoke and I couldn’t see anything and I heard other explosions further away. Then as the smoke around me eased, I saw people on the ground, including the municipal workers and also my wife Oksana was laying on the ground. When my daughter saw her mum on the ground in a pool of blood, she said to me “let’s go home; mum is dead and the people are dead.” She was in shock and so was I. I still don’t know whether my wife will recover; the doctors cannot say if she will be able to speak or walk again. Our world has been turned upside down. Ivan Litvynyenko © Amnesty International

At the nearby Hulliver Park, Olha Sadovska, age 65, was sitting on a bench with her husband when several cluster munitions exploded, injuring her and others around her. She recalled:

My husband and I went out for a stroll in the park next to our house. It was crowded. There was a ping pong table, with boys playing ping pong. We sat down on a bench. Within seconds, there was an explosion. All the boys playing ping pong fell. Then multiple explosions. A man yelled, “get down!” We hit the ground, then I saw blood was oozing from my leg. Olha Sadovska

©Amnesty International The playground near Myru St where cluster munitions exploded on 15 April, gravely injuring Oksana Litvynyenko who tragically died on the 11th of June 2022 & killing & injuring others.

All over the area Amnesty International researchers found the distinctive black fins and metal pellets from 9N210/9N235 cluster munitions, as well as craters with symmetrical spalling, consistent with the expected damage and fragment pattern from the explosion of these munitions.

One of the 100s of lethal metal pellets contained in the cluster munitions that exploded in Myru St Toggle Content ©Amnesty International Some of the metal pellets contained in the cluster munitions, which doctors at the hospital removed from the bodies of those injured in the strike on Myru St on 15 April Toggle Content ©Amnesty International Shrapnel holes in the wall & smashed windows (boarded up) where cluster munition exploded nearby (crater visible in the grass) Toggle Content ©Amnesty International Crater from explosion of one of the many cluster munitions which exploded in the courtyard Toggle Content ©Amnesty International Next Previous

Strikes in places where people were queuing for humanitarian aid

At least six people were killed and some 15 injured when cluster munitions struck a parking lot outside the post office near the Akademika Pavlova metro station, raining down shrapnel where hundreds of people were queuing for humanitarian aid in the morning of 24 March.17

Valeriia Kolyshkina, a sales assistant in a pet food shop 150 metres east of the post office, told Amnesty International that a man was killed just outside the shop. One of the cluster munitions exploded a few metres to the right of the store, shattering the glass front of a nearby store. Valeriia Kolyshkina recalled hearing the loud noise of glass smashing and people screaming and running into the shop while the shop owner told people to lie down.

She described the scene:

A man was killed just outside the shop. He was standing outside smoking while his wife was buying pet food. He was about 50 to 60 years old. Metal shrapnel came through the front window flying over my head as I was behind the counter. Then there were several more explosions. It was utter panic. The shop was full of people. We ran to the storage room at the back of the shop for protection. It was very scary. (I consider that day as my second birthday, I thought I would die.) Valeriia Kolyshkina

“There were a lot of people in the parking lot,” recalled Ruslan, a policeman, describing the scene on the northern side of the parking lot, where people were waiting in line for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. More civilians were also waiting in line at the entrance of a supermarket 120 meters further south, where another explosion occurred. “It was really a horrible situation,” said Ruslan. “Shrapnel was falling like rain.” Civilians ran for cover in panic in the direction of the shops east of the parking lot while cluster munitions went off.

Several people were injured near the entrance to the Akademika Pavlova metro station, on the western edge of the parking lot. Ruslan was in his car, preparing to leave alongside Sadagad and Dmitry – two other policemen – after they had finished their shift at the metro station, where many civilians had found refuge in the previous month. Also sitting in the car were 13-year-old Oleksandr, Dmitry’s brother, and their mother Olena.

© Amnesty International Several people were injured when cluster munitions exploded near the entrance to the Akademika Pavlova metro station, where hundreds of people were living to try to keep safe from indiscriminate shelling.

Shrapnel hit Sadagad, who was outside the car, severely injuring his right arm and leg. A blast knocked over Olena while she was running for cover with Oleksandr towards the metro station. As Oleksandr ran back to help his mother, a cluster munition exploded near the entrance to the station, injuring him in the left foot. “I think he survived because he came back to me, because the shelling was very close to the metro entrance,” said Olena. Ruslan also suffered shrapnel injuries to his right foot and leg.

Ruslan and Dmitry rushed to drag Oleksandr and Sadagad, who were too injured to walk, into the metro station. Ruslan applied an improvised tourniquet to Sadagad to stop the bleeding. Alongside Oleksandr, the pair received first aid in the station before being transferred to Kharkiv military hospital. As of mid-May 2022, both Sadagad and Oleksandr remain in recovery: Oleksandr is in a wheelchair and lost sensation in his left foot, while Sadagad, who suffered from multiple fractures and damage to his vessels from the shrapnel, remains hospitalized.

While many of the cluster munitions exploded in the parking lot, others exploded hundreds of metres away. Sasha, a 45-year-old post office employee, told Amnesty International that he was at work when an explosion was heard in the area and people fled:

I had just got on my bike when I heard another explosion followed by many smaller explosions. I fell off my bike and felt pain and I knew that I was injured. I was bleeding a lot. I ran to a nearby building, carrying my bicycle. (I had taken a loan to buy my bicycle so I did not want to leave it behind even if [it was] broken.) I was wounded in the chest and the left arm. An ambulance took me to hospital. I had a small axe in my backpack and it saved my life. Two pieces of shrapnel struck it, which prevented them from penetrating into my body. Now I am too scared to go out or to stay anywhere above ground. So I’m not staying in my apartment; I’m living in the metro station. I can’t get over the fear. Sasha

Two other cluster munitions went through the roof of the Holy Trinity Church, 500 metres away from where the rocket landed. The church also serves as a humanitarian hub and it is busy all day with volunteers preparing food and aid packages to be distributed to older people and those with disabilities and reduced mobility who cannot go and queue at humanitarian assistance distribution points. Pastor Petro Loboiko and Pastor Serheii Andreiivich showed Amnesty International shrapnel from two cluster munitions which exploded on the roof of the church, penetrating through to the rooms and hallway where minutes earlier a dozen people had been standing. Shrapnel from the munitions penetrated the walls and doors, damaging adjacent rooms, and the explosion damaged the ceiling of the floor below, where humanitarian aid is stored and packaged for distribution.

© Amnesty International Volunteers at the Holy Trinity Church, which serves as a humanitarian hub and was damaged on 24 March when cluster munitions exploded on the roof. © Amnesty International Pastor Petro Loboiko showing damage to the church’s ceiling from the cluster munitions explosion on 24 March.

In front of the post office Amnesty International researchers found parts of a 220mm Uragan rocket, which carries 30 cluster munitions, still embedded in a crater in the tarmac. And all over the area they found fins and pellets and other fragments from 9N235/9N210 cluster munitions, as well as small craters where the munitions exploded.

© Amnesty International Crater with remain of rocket which exploded near a crowd of people queueing for humanitarian aid on 24 March 2022. © Amnesty International Shrapnel from the cluster munitions which exploded near a crowd of people queueing for humanitarian aid on 24 March 2022.

The area immediately around the church was previously shelled with different munitions on at least two occasions. On 28 February or 1 March a Grad rocket destroyed a one-storey house opposite the church where Andrii Mykolaiovych, a church worker, lived with his wife and two children.

He told Amnesty International that thankfully he had just left the house to go fetch water when the rocket struck his home. The following day another rocket struck the yard of the church, damaging vehicles parked there but causing no casualties as the volunteers involved in the church’s humanitarian work were busy inside the building. © Amnesty International Andrii Mykolaiovych, a church worker, shows the remains of the Grad rocket which destroyed his home on 28 February or 1 March 2022.

Older people killed and injured outside their homes

In Saltivka, a neighbourhood that has been relentlessly targeted since the first days of the war, two older women and a 41-year-old man were killed, and at least six of their neighbours were injured, in a series of cluster submunition explosions on the morning of 26 April 2022. Nina Nosonenko, a 50-year-old sales assistant, and her husband Valerii, age 49, were both badly injured outside their home in Haribaldi Street. Valerii told Amnesty International:

We went out at about 11:45 am and as we were by the corner of the building I heard a sound: not the usual whistle of a Grad rocket, which we had gotten used to, but a shorter, sharper sound. At the same time a shell hit the ground, exploding with a small fire and sending stones and smoke in the air. Since the explosion was at ground level I decided not to lie down and to run up the street instead. I grabbed Nina’s hand and told her to keep her head down and run. At the same time I felt a sharp pain at the back of my left thigh. I grabbed my leg with my hands and looked back and Nina was right behind me and was following me. I was bleeding and in pain and I ran towards the first entrance of the building and asked our neighbour Olha to call an ambulance, and at that moment there was a second explosion and Nina fell to the ground. She was injured in the back. Shrapnel went through from her back to the front of her collar bone and damaged her lung. Valerii Nonosenko

Valerii Nonosenko left the hospital three weeks after the strike while Nina was still in the hospital at the time of writing.

Other cluster submunitions exploded near the entrance of building 2 across the road, killing two older women and seriously injuring a woman and a man. The four had been sitting on the bench outside the building’s entrance. Their neighbour Liudmyla, a trauma nurse who administered first aid to one of those injured, told Amnesty International that she heard loud explosions and shrapnel went through the window of her apartment on the fourth floor and she ran downstairs.

She described what she saw as she reached the building entrance:

Tetiana Bielova and Olena were sitting on the bench by the building’s entrance with the other Tetiana and her husband when the explosions across the road happened. They got up and tried to go inside the building when another bomb exploded right here by the entrance, and they all suffered devasting injuries. I found Tetiana Bielova lying face down on the first flight of stairs inside the building. She had died on the spot. The other Tetiana was lying face down on the steps outside the building, where she died almost immediately, and her husband was on the ground severely injured, bleeding from the head and abdomen area. He had been walking behind her; he walked slowly, supporting himself with a walking stick. Another neighbour, Olena Sorokina, was by the entrance door with catastrophic injuries; her right leg had been cut off in the blast. I applied a torniquet to stop the bleeding and her husband, who had also rushed outside, tied some fabric to her left leg to try to stop the bleeding there. Liudmyla

© Amnesty International Trauma nurse Liudmyla shows where cluster munitions exploded, killing and injuring several of her neighbours by the entrance of their building in the Saltivka neighbourhood on 26 April. © Amnesty International.

Olena Sorokina, a 57-year-old cancer survivor, lost both her legs in the blast. She told Amnesty International that she was sitting outside her building waiting for humanitarian aid delivery when she heard the sound of a flying shell and ran to the entrance of the building, where she was hit. Then she remembers being in an ambulance and realizing that she had lost a leg. She was taken to hospital, where her other leg also had to be amputated.

Olena is now in western Ukraine, hoping to be transferred to a rehabilitation facility in Europe. “After the battle with cancer, now I have to face another battle to learn to function without legs,” she lamented.

Maria Bielova, Tetiana’s daughter, told Amnesty International that shrapnel from the explosion also tore through her mother’s apartment on the ground floor of the building: “Even if mum had been inside her home she would have been hit. She stood no chance in the face of such bombing”.

A further explosion some 200 metres down the road killed Oleksandr Lebediv, age 41, who was sitting by the bus stop, and injured Yevheniia, a 42-year-old mother of two. She told Amnesty International that she had been standing in the grocery shop where she works when shrapnel from the cluster submunition smashed the shop window and flew inside the shop, injuring her left leg. Neighbours told Amnesty International that two passers-by, a pregnant woman and a man who were walking by the bridge further down from the shop where Yevheniia works, were also injured in the explosions. © Amnesty International Yevheniia was standing inside the grocery shop where she works in the Saltivka neighbourhood when she was injured by shrapnel from cluster munitions which exploded nearby on 26 April.

All over the area Amnesty International researchers found the distinctive fins and metal pellets and other fragments from the 9N235/9N210 cluster munitions and several craters and spalling on the ground, consistent with the damage typically caused by these cluster munitions.

All the cluster munitions strikes investigated by Amnesty International involved multiple casualties over wide areas, streets apart. Seven civilians were killed and more than 30 injured when a series of cluster munitions exploded over several streets on the north and south sides of Heroiv Stalinhrada Avenue, south of the city centre (north of the airport), in the early evening of 3 April.18 Four witnesses told Amnesty International that they saw a man and a woman killed in front of building 3 on Monyushka Street. Tetiana, a resident of the building, said:



I was in the kitchen, and when the explosion happened I felt the windows and the furniture shake and I ran to the hallway. I heard screams. Outside, a woman and a man were lying in a pool of blood by the benches in front of the building. They were both dead. A third man was taken away by ambulance. I don’t know if he was alive or dead. Pieces of the bombs came flying into our homes. My neighbour was working on the computer by the window but luckily he had decided to lie down on the sofa for a rest only minutes before the explosion. Several other passers- by were killed and many were injured in the area. It was carnage. I will never forget that day. Tetiana

Several blocks to the southeast, on Fonvizina Street, three witnesses told Amnesty International that a man was mortally injured when a cluster munition exploded near his car outside building number 16.19 The owner of a nearby grocery store, who was himself injured by shrapnel from one of the explosions while inside his shop, said that he tried to apply an improvised tourniquet to the man’s leg to stop the bleeding, but he died within minutes. Amnesty International researchers found more than a dozen craters and fragments

of cluster munitions all over the area where residents described multiple explosions and where damage consistent with such explosions was visible on walls, fences, doors and windows. In Fonvizina Street the researchers counted six separate craters where cluster munitions exploded over a 100-metre stretch of road.

© Amnesty International Sasha showing fragments of cluster munitions which exploded near his shop; the fragments killed a man nearby and flew into the store.

At least two men were killed in their homes and several of their relatives and neighbours injured when a series of cluster munitions exploded across several streets in the Pysochin suburb on the western edge of the city at around 5pm on 10 April.20

Strike on Pysochin suburb on the western edge of Kharkiv. Video: Grisha Streliuk via Facebook

© Amnesty International Viktor Andriiovych was mortally wounded in the garden of his home when cluster munitions exploded in the Pysochin neighbourood on 10 April, also killing and wounding other neighbours. © Amnesty International Oleksandra Andriivna by the stairs to the cellar in their garden, where her brother Viktor Andriiovych was mortally wounded by cluster munition shrapnel.

Oleksandra Andriivna, a 70-year-old pensioner, told Amnesty International that her 66-year-old brother Viktor Andriiovych was mortally wounded in the garden of their home:

I was in the garden when the explosions occurred in the area and Viktor was in the house and he ran outside and pushed me into the stairs to the cellar. I had gone down three steps when he said he was hit in his leg and he sat on the first step and blood was pouring from his leg. His main artery was cut and he quickly bled to death. I feel guilty because he came out of the house to save me and was killed. He was a fire fighter at Chernobyl when the disaster happened and then he raised his youngest son on his own. He always helped other people, and he died to save me. Oleksandra Andriivna

In a nearby street, some 200 metres to the north-west, several other cluster munitions exploded killing Ivan Aiuvdzy, a 45-year-old salesman and father of two, and injuring his brother-in-law Yevhen Chumachenko. Both sustained shrapnel wounds to the legs. Like his neighbour Viktor, Ivan Aiuvdzy bled to death after his main artery was cut by shrapnel. Next door, his neighbour Oleksandr Lavrenko, a 62-year-old pensioner, suffered injuries to his arms as he tried to shield his head from flying shrapnel, which killed the family dog and damaged the summer kitchen - his wife told Amnesty International.

Cluster bomb attack on a graveyard

On 28 April, cluster bombs killed Valerii Zaborskyi, a 53-year-old man, in the cemetery of Kotliary, a settlement on the southern outskirts of Kharkiv, close to Kharkiv international airport. “He had just gone to the cemetery to clean the grave of his father,” said Iryna, his sister, adding that “there were a lot of people” at the cemetery, as such cemetery visits are traditional following Orthodox Easter. Valerii’s niece, Kateryna, age 39, who was there with her uncle when the cluster munitions struck, recalled that she initially saw two rockets overhead, but said that rockets flying over the village was a common sight at the time. She added:

After that we heard all the explosions around the cemetery and I heard my uncle shout: “Lie down on the ground!” We all fell on the ground and everything started to explode. There was damage … All of the shrapnel inside [the rocket] and pieces [of the rocket] fell on us in the cemetery … My sister was lying around really close to me and after the explosions finished, I checked with my relatives. I called their names: Valerii, and Ania, my sister. Ania replied but not my uncle and that’s when I realized he was dead. Kateryna

Kateryna said that as she ran with her sister to her car, munitions continued to explode. She suffered burn wounds on her back and said two other people from her group were injured in the incident.

©Amnesty International Shrapnel from the cluster munitions which exploded on 28 April in the cemetery in Kotliary, near Kharkiv airport; the strike killed Valerii Zaborskyi as he stood by his father’s grave and injured several others.

At the cemetery Amnesty International researchers found seven craters where the cluster munitions exploded, causing damage to several graves, and multiple fragments from 9N210/9N235 cluster munitions. A resident of a farm near the cemetery showed Amnesty International the spots where the Uragan rocket containing the cluster munitions landed in her field and the spot by the roadside where Svitlana, a villager, was injured.21

[END]

[1] Url: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2022/06/anyone-can-die-at-any-time-kharkiv/

Content appears here by permission of RFE/RL

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/rferl/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.