A Jewish cemetery in the town of Gluhov, in the Sumy district of northern Ukraine, was hit by Russian rocket fire and dozens of tombstones were damaged, a Ukrainian news website reported.
Some of the tombstones caught fire in a fire that broke out in the weeds that filled the cemetery and others were smashed as a result of the rocket fire.
The cemetery, which was established about 200 years ago, has over 600 graves and tombstones, some of them rabbis and tzaddiks who lived in the area.
The attack on the cemetery made headlines in Ukraine and the Ukrainian Minister of Culture, Alexander Tkachenko, said that there was, among other things, a mass grave of victims of a pogrom that happened to the town's Jewish residents in 1918, as well as the graves of two Tzaddiks who were known among the area's Jews.
The Ukrainian minister surprised when he said: "The fact that the tombs of the Jewish righteous have survived the injury is proof that all the supreme forces are on our side."
Rabbi Meir Stumbler, Chabad emissary and chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Ukraine, said: "It is difficult to describe in words the pain caused by these scenes.
We have a long process of restoring the Jewish communities in the country and we pray that this terrible war will end soon. "
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