At least 13 people died overnight from Friday to Saturday in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine.
This is the provisional assessment of drone strikes carried out by Russia.
Three children were counted among the victims.
The governor of the region, Oleg Sinegoubov, specifies that the children were aged “7 years, 4 years and around 6 months”.
A previous report reported 7 people dead.
But as reported by the Ukrainian media Kyiv Independent, the total number of deaths was reassessed a little after 10:30 a.m. (9:30 a.m. in Paris) by the region's prosecutor, Oleksandr Filachkov, after the discovery of new bodies.
The drones, Iranian-made Shaded, “hit a gas station and caused a spill of flaming fuel, which caused 14 private houses to burn,” said the city’s mayor, Igor Terekhov, specifying that the fire covered a large area and led to the evacuation of around fifty people.
⚡️ A whole family burned alive in a house in Kharkiv due to Russian shelling: a couple and three children.
The head of the Regional Military Administration, Oleh Syniehubov, reports.
The body of the man was found in the corridor of the house, and the mother and children tried… pic.twitter.com/6jnPMHZBG8
— FLASH (@Flash_news_ua) February 10, 2024
“Three drones struck the Nemyshlyanskyi district of Kharkiv.
Sensitive infrastructure was destroyed,” said the Kharkiv regional prosecutor, referring to the gas station.
“There was a huge amount of fuel, which explains why the fire was so terrible,” he said.
“14 houses were destroyed,” said Kharkiv police chief Volodymyr Timochko.
The attack comes after a series of nighttime strikes further east, in the town of Velykyï Bourlouk.
NATO calls for increasing the rate of arms production
The Secretary General of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) also called on Europeans to increase their arms production to increase deliveries to Ukraine and prevent a confrontation with Russia, "which could last decades ".
Less than a week before the meeting of NATO Defense Ministers in Brussels (Belgium), on February 15 and 16, Jens Stoltenberg insisted, in an interview published this Saturday in the German press, on the fact that “We need to replenish and develop our industrial base more quickly in order to increase deliveries to Ukraine and replenish our own stocks.”
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“This means moving from slow production in times of peace to rapid production in times of conflict,” he told Welt am Sonntag.
“There is no imminent military threat against a NATO ally.
At the same time, the Kremlin
(Editor's note: the seat of the Russian presidency)
regularly issues threats against NATO countries.
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Stressing that Russia's invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago showed that "peace in Europe is not a given", he insists on the importance of protecting the countries of the Alliance.
“As long as we invest in our security and remain united, we will continue to deter aggression.
» He finally warns against the risk of long-term tensions: “NATO is not seeking war with Russia.
But we must prepare for a confrontation that could last decades.
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