UMAN, Ukraine – Inna stood staring at what was left of her home on Friday, the building’s facade almost completely blown away. Maybe her children, 17-year-old Kyrylo and 11-year-old Sophia, were swept away by the explosion, she kept repeating in the wind. Perhaps they will be found alive.
Her husband, Dmytro, ran to the children’s room shortly after a Russian rocket crashed into their nine-story apartment building before dawn in the city of Uman, forcing their door open.
“There is no place behind the door,” said Dmytro, who asked to use only their names. “Just a cloud of fire and smoke.”
Inna and their youngest child, a 6-year-old boy, were in another room and were unharmed.
“I didn’t know what to do,” said Dmytro, still in shock as rescuers searched through the building’s rubble. “Do I look for the older children or help my wife and small child out of the house? Since I couldn’t see my older children, I ran outside.”
A psychologist at the scene offered help as his neighbors tried to offer words of comfort.
Twelve hours after the missile hit, the death toll rose to 23, including four children, according to Ukraine’s emergency services. Seventeen residents were pulled out alive.
It is unclear how many people are still missing; More than 100 people were registered as living in the worst-hit housing estate.
Bodies continued to be pulled from the rubble as night fell. Convoys of dump trucks followed each other to carry debris for workers to dig tunnels. Officials said the operation could last through the weekend.
Dymytro Vynohradov, 22, was one of the first paramedics on the scene. As the fire brigade battled the flames that lit up the sky before dawn, he rushed to search for survivors.
On the seventh floor, he said he found two elderly women and a man trapped behind a fallen concrete ceiling. They were not injured, he said, but stunned and confused.
“First we have to reassure them,” he said. “We then helped them climb out of the balcony and down a long ladder from the fire truck.”
Vynohradov rushed back to help a colleague pull another family of five to safety.
Not all of the people he met in the wreckage were still alive. He said there was a dead 10-year-old boy in his pajamas, and a girl with blonde hair that looked like she was sleeping. “She had no obvious injuries, but she was dead,” he said.
The city of Uman, known for having one of the most beautiful parks in Ukraine, was one of the first places Russia bombed when it launched its full-blown invasion last year.
The town was relatively quiet for months, although residents could see rockets flying overhead as Russian forces fired rockets from the Black Sea towards the capital Kyiv.
That’s why when alarms went off across the country shortly after 4 a.m. Friday, 34-year-old Halyna, who asked not to release her last name for security reasons, texted her sister-in-law. hers in Uman. For more than a year, the couple exchanged messages whenever air raid sirens sounded in Uman so that family members in Kiev were alerted.
“Hello, is all quiet?” Helena wrote.
“Yes, temporarily quiet. How about you?” sister-in-law replied.
Sister-in-law’s phone went off at 4:23 a.m. The family has two apartments, on the 7th and 8th floors, in the dilapidated building.
“I hope she’s still alive, maybe she went down to the basement,” Halyna said.
Anna Lukinova contribution report.
