Rescue workers carried away the wounded on stretchers and clambered
through the ruined building looking for survivors after the
early-morning strike, a Reuters television crew on the scene said.
The upper floors of the apartment block had been destroyed and cars
parked nearby had been crumpled. Fallen debris lay around the
building.
"The people were screaming from under the rubble. It was hard to
hear. We were shocked," Yuliia Kharytenko, a 36-year-old woman who
lives in the apartment block, told Reuters.
"We ran out in whatever we were wearing. Our cat is left there,
scared. We don’t know if it is alive."
The Ukrainian state prosecutor's office said four people had been
killed and eight wounded in the attack. Another five were
unaccounted for, it said.
Seven of those rescued were being treated in hospital, and three of
then were in a serious condition, said Anatoliy Kurtev, a senior
city council official.
Among those who survived was a 30-year-old man who rescue workers
said had been sleeping on a couch at the time of the attack and was
trapped under a concrete slab.
"For almost three hours rescuers worked to recover him from under
the slab. He is alive and well, everything is fine," said volunteer
rescue worker Ivan Zdorovets.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the attack in a Facebook
post, saying Ukraine would drive out the Russian forces who invaded
Ukraine in February last year.
"The terrorist state wants to turn every day for our people into a
day of terror. But evil will not reign in our land. We will drive
all the occupiers out and they will definitely be held accountable
for everything," he wrote.
Moscow did not immediately comment on the events in Zaporizhzhia. It
denies deliberately targeting civilians, but has devastated towns
and cities across Ukraine in missile and drone strikes.
(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic and Kyiv newsroom, Editing by
Timothy Heritage)
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