Firefighters were searching the remains of a burned house on Saturday morning in search of the body of a child, the last member of a family killed in a catastrophic fire caused by a Russian drone attack.
Four bodies were already lying in bags in the yard. Investigators found the charred remains of the father in a hallway and the mother and her two children in the bathroom.
A total of seven people died when Russian drones struck a fuel depot on Friday evening, in one of the most calamitous attacks ever launched on the city of Kharkiv, the northeastern city of the country that suffered a series missile strikes in recent weeks. Burning fuel poured into the street from the destroyed depot, setting a row of houses on fire so quickly that two families were burned to death in their homes.
“The family was taken hostage by the fire inside their own house,” said Serhii Bolvinov, chief investigator of the Kharkiv police, after firefighters and investigators dug for hours into the smoking rubble. “All were very badly burned and a DNA examination will be necessary for final conclusions.”
Oleksandr Kobylev, head of the war crimes department of the Kharkiv regional police, said the Russians attacked with Iranian-supplied Shahed drones that struck shortly before 11 p.m.
“The burning fuel was flowing towards the construction sites,” he said. “People were doomed.”
Fifteen houses burned in the fire. In addition to the seven deaths, three people were injured in the fire, but more than 50 others managed to escape unhurt.
“It was hot 150 meters from the fire,” Mr Kobylev said. “Fences, cars, houses were catching fire. »
On Saturday, the street was covered in sticky black mud, mixed with charred fuel residue. A small fire was still burning in the hilltop depot, but the worst damage was down the slope, where houses were gutted.
“We heard Shaheds flying,” said Olena, 36, who lives in a house at the top of the hill, closest to the oil depot. “It was a buzzing sound, like a low-flying plane. Then a bang and a flash. Three explosions.
Like several other survivors interviewed, she asked that only her first name be published for safety reasons.
“I called the emergency services at 10:46 p.m.,” she said. “When we saw burning fuel flowing into our yard, I grabbed my one-year-old twins and ran into the yards.”
Survivors described a river of fire flowing through their yards just five minutes after the explosions from the drone strikes.
“I could smell the diesel. It looked like lava coming from a volcano,” said Mykhaylo, 49, who fled with his brother Oleksandr, 35, his brother’s girlfriend and their dog; they even managed to drive away their car. “Within 10 minutes the whole house was on fire,” he said.
But two families did not escape it.
Olha and Hryhory Putiatin died with their three children, Lyosha, 7 years old, Misha, 4 years old and Pasha, 10 months old. After hours of searching, firefighters found Misha separated from his parents under a pile of rubble in the kitchen.
Volodymyr, a relative, said the family usually hid in the garden cellar in case of air raids. “I was afraid they would choke from the smoke,” he said. “But this time they probably ran out and saw the yard was on fire, so they hid in the toilet,” he said.
A rescue worker kissed the children’s grandmother, Tetyana, to prevent her from seeing the bodies. “I am a mother. I want to see!” she shouted.
“How can I bury my children and grandchildren? She cried.
In several houses on the street, a resident, Vadym, stood over the covered bodies of his parents, Anatoly, 70, and Svitlana, 65. His father was bedridden after a stroke and his mother was caring for him, said Vadym: who lives nearby with his wife, Nataliya.
“Mom called, screaming, ‘The house is on fire!’ “, he said. “We arrived in 10 minutes, but the fire was already raging inside the house. The whole street was burning. The houses burned like matchboxes.
His parents had never left Kharkiv during two years of war, but the fire overwhelmed them, he said. “They couldn’t escape. It was a river of burning diesel.”
