A Russian missile attack on a hotel in Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv has injured at least 13 people, including journalists from Turkey covering the war, local officials said.
The strike involved S-300 missiles, officials confirmed.
“13 people were injured. Among them is a citizen of Turkey and a citizen of Georgia, both of whom are journalists of the Turkish media,” said a statement from Kharkiv’s prosecutor’s office.
Earlier, Kharkiv’s regional governor Oleh Synehubov said nine people had been taken to hospital. “One of them, a 35-year-old man, is in serious condition,” he said.
Photos and videos of the missile strike – the second on a civilian target in three days in Kharkiv – showed the windows of the hotel blown out and glass shards scattered across the ground.
The attack also destroyed balconies, reducing them to large piles of concrete rubble in the street.
Crew members of emergency teams were seen entering the blown out holes in the facade to sift through rubble and rescue trapped people.
Kharkiv police chief Volodymyr Tymoshko confirmed that one of the two missiles struck a patch next to the hotel, right by a fence, and the other hit a nearby annex.
"Servicemen never stayed in this hotel and just about everyone in Kharkiv knows this. It was used by journalists," he said.
A hotel guest present at the site of the attack said no air raid alert was heard before the missile hit.
"I was in the bathroom and that was what saved me. I fell, hit my head and then lay on the floor," said the guest, a psychiatrist named Mykhailo Bebeshko.
"With a second explosion, all the doors were blown out and it was fortunate that I had been on the floor. And I shouted out to my colleagues: Everyone ok? Everyone still alive?"
A total of 23 guests and eight staff members were present in the hotel when the Russian attack took place.
Several homes in the district had been damaged as well as a manufacturing plant and a car showroom, said Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov.
Russia has not yet commented on the strike.
The missiles used in Wednesday’s attack – S-300 – are from a family of surface-to-air missiles, originally developed by the Soviet Union.
These S-300 missiles are intended to shoot down aircraft, drones and incoming cruise and ballistic missiles, and equipped with guidance systems to automatically latch on to targets. Several individual missiles can be fired simultaneously at multiple targets.
