Ukrainian rescue teams work at the site of a Russian glide-bomb attack on a nine-story residential building in Kharkiv on Wednesday night in which two boys, aged 12 and 15, and a man were killed. At least 35 people were also injured. Photo courtesy Kharkiv Military Administration/EPA-EFE
Oct. 31 (UPI) -- An airborne Russian assault on the frontline Ukrainian city of Kharkiv overnight killed three people, including a 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy, and injured 35, regional authorities said.
Kharkiv prosecutor's office spokesman Dmytro Chubenko said the 12-year-old was pulled dead from a badly damaged building while the 15-year-old boy likely survived the strike but succumbed to his injuries while buried in the rubble.
He said rescue workers had also recovered the body of a male civilian thought to be 25-30 years old, which authorities were still working to identify as no relatives or contacts had yet come forward.
Early indications showed the strike on a nine-story apartment block in the residential district of Saltivskyi was carried out with a 1,100 pound "FAB-500" glide bomb, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote in an update on his social media account.
The "500" refers to the 500 kilograms of ordnance the Russian-made guided bomb delivers.
"The enemy once again chose the night time for terror, when people are at home as families," said Syniehubov.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used the attack as an example with which to rebuke the country's Western allies for their failure to come to a consensus on allowing Ukraine to use weapons they supply to target Russia's strike capability on Russian soil.
"Partners see what happens every day. In these circumstances, every delayed decision on their part means dozens or even hundreds more Russian bombs used against Ukraine," he wrote in a post on X.
"Their decisions are the lives of our people."
Wednesday night's attack came two days after another Russian guided-bomb launched from an aircraft struck Kharkiv's 96-year-old UNESCO-listed Constructivist movement-inspired Derzhprom building -- eastern Europe's equivalent of the Empire State Building -- injuring nine people including a police officer.
Four people were later killed in a separate strike overnight Monday in which several houses were razed.