Wandering stunned in the street, Svitlana Pelelygina observes the smoke rising from the ruins of her apartment, hit by one of the bombings that hit the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine on Sunday.
“The whole apartment started to sway and shake,” the 71-year-old woman told AFP. “And everything started to catch fire.”
“I called the firefighters. They told me: + we are on the way but we are also being targeted by strikes +”, she recalls.
In Moscow’s crosshairs since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was withdrawing his troops from the kyiv region to concentrate on eastern Ukraine, Kharkiv has been experiencing deadly bombardments every day.
In this town located just 21 kilometers from the Russian border, at least five people were killed and 13 injured on Sunday in a series of strikes, according to the emergency services.
AFP journalists on the spot heard two shellings and saw five fires spreading through residential areas in the center of Kharkiv, once famous for its charm.
This city, the second largest in Ukraine, with -before the war- nearly one and a half million inhabitants, has always remained under the control of Ukrainian forces.
All of its administrative buildings were destroyed by Russian strikes.
– Tremors –
Immediately after the strikes, around 2 p.m. local time (1100 GMT), 33 emergency service vehicles and 150 firefighters were dispatched to more than 15 points in the city, an official said, while pedestrians ran for cover , panicked.
“You know how a dog hears a + boom + and starts shaking all over his body, even if the noise is far away? I’m like that now,” says Zinaïda Nestrijenko, 69, who lived in the same building as Mrs. Pelelyguina.
With her cat snuggled up against her stomach, she stands scared on the sidewalk. “Everything in me, every part of me, is shaking.”
The streets are littered with shattered glass and pieces of corrugated iron, torn from nearby rooftops by the blast.
At each corner of the center of Kharkiv, dazed passers-by discover a new team of firefighters, busy pulling out their water hoses and riveting them to the fire hydrants.
Rescuers climb the steps of a gigantic staircase then open a door with an angle grinder to access the roof of a building, pierced by a strike.
Through the hole, we see firefighters trying to put out the fire that took hold of another house, a few steps from where Svitlana Pelelyguina and Zinaïda Nestrijenko lived.
In this central artery, a camel-colored coat lies on the cobblestones, gradually stained by a red pool.
A violent downpour falls on Kharkiv and the blood mixes with the rainwater.