Russian attack on Sumy in Ukraine Russian strikes on Ukrainian city of Sumy kill 35, in deadliest attack this year by Svitlana Vlasova and Rosa Rahimi, CNN
Meghan & Sparry are toxic Tragedy Vultures: They only care for their own security. Parliament needs to strip the titles, and Invictus---do better!!
The strikes hit the city center on Palm Sunday as residents were attending church services on one of the busiest church-going days of the year, according to Ukraine’s Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko. Natalia Pihul, a 52-year-old Sumy resident, told Reuters that her mother was hospitalized after suffering a head injury. “(My mother) was in the kitchen cooking some food, lunch … A cupboard was right here, now it lies here on the floor. It fell and its doors cut her head,” she said as she walked around her mother’s damaged apartment. The explosion blew out the unit’s window frames, scattering glass shards all across the kitchen and living room. Outside the building, footage from Reuters showed charred vehicles next to piles of rubble and personal belongings littering the street. “Where is a military base here? Where is it? Please have a look. A woman lived here. Look at this! How is this even possible? It is unacceptable,” Pihul said. A total of 20 buildings were damaged, including apartments, cafes, shops and the district court, Zelensky later wrote on X. Of the more than 100 people wounded in the attack, he said 68 were in hospitals, eight of whom were in serious condition. Volodymyr Artyukh, head of the military administration in the region, said that “at that time, a lot of people were on the street.” “The enemy was hoping to inflict the greatest damage on people in the city of Sumy,” Artyuk added. The attack is also the worst single attack on Ukrainian civilians since 2023, when 51 people were killed in strikes on Kupiansk. Footage from the scene shows destroyed buildings, blown-out windows and piles of rubble in the Sumy city center. Bodies covered in emergency blankets can be seen on the ground. Cluster munitions contain multiple explosives that are released over a wide area – up to the size of several football fields – and are particularly dangerous to civilians when fired near populated areas. “A missile with cluster munitions is something Russians do to kill as many civilians as possible,” said Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, calling the strike a “deliberate targeting of civilians.” It was a two-pronged attack, with the second of two missiles likely filled with munitions that “exploded mid-air to inflict maximum damage on people” and caused large numbers of casualties, the head of the region’s military administration said. The second explosion happened about 200 meters from the site of the first, hitting an area with residential buildings, educational institutions and shops. Sumy resident Iryna Pryykhodko told Reuters that the “first explosion was strong, but the second one was even stronger.” “First, I saw shattered windows. Then, before the second strike, we took cover inside the residential building,” she said. “After the second strike, it was all covered with smoke and I could not see anything.” Among those killed was Olena Kohut, an artist with the Sumy National Theatre’s orchestra, who died from her injuries in the attack. Liudmyla Hordiienko, a deputy head in the region’s state tax service, was also killed.
