Russian strike on Kharkiv home improvement store: Death toll rises to 11 (2024)

Russia on Saturday, May 25, bombed a hardware superstore in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, killing 11 people according to a new toll in an attack condemned as "vile" by President Volodymyr Zelensky. "Unfortunately, the death toll at 'Epitsentr' has increased to 11 people," Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram, referring to the store hit Saturday.

Earlier he said that on top of the killed, dozens were wounded after "two Russian guided bombs hit a construction hypermarket" and "a fire broke out over 15,000 square meters." Videos posted by witnesses on social media showed a huge column of black smoke billowing into the sky from a fire in the Epitsentr store, located in an area of large stores beside a car park. The Epitsentr chain of hypermarkets sells household and DIY goods.

The city of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest, regularly comes under attack from Russian missiles, with strikes on the city killing at least seven people on Thursday. The latest attack came after Russia launched a ground offensive in the Kharkiv region on May 10. Ukraine said Friday that it had managed to halt Moscow's progress and was counterattacking.

"As of now, we know that more than 200 people could have been inside the hypermarket," Zelensky said on Telegram, condemning the daylight attack on an "obviously civilian" target. "Russia struck another brutal blow at our Kharkiv – at a construction hypermarket – on Saturday, right in the middle of the day," Zelensky said.

"Only madmen like Putin are capable of killing and terrorizing people in such a vile way," he added. "There were a lot of workers and shoppers inside. Now the fire is on the whole territory," the president said.

Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said that according to the store's owner, 15 store employees had not been in contact and approximately 200 people were in the building at the time of the strikes. "We have a large number of people missing. There are many wounded," Terekhov wrote on Telegram.

On Saturday, Russia shelled the village of Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, a railway hub in the Kharkiv region near the border, wounding five, the regional prosecutor's office said in a statement. It said that two vehicles came under fire: a car with two passengers and an ambulance with a driver, a paramedic and a 64-year-old patient.

Russia also carried out air strikes on the Kupiansk district, damaging a factory and residential buildings, the prosecutor's office said. In the eastern Donetsk region, shelling on Saturday killed a 40-year-old woman and wounded four, said the head of the regional administration, Vadym Filashkin.