MOSCOW, May 22 (Reuters) – Russian officials said at least four people had been killed and 35 children wounded in an overnight Ukrainian drone attack on a student dormitory in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine.
Reuters was not able to verify what happened independently and there was no immediate comment on Friday from Ukraine, which wants to recapture Luhansk, one of four eastern regions that Moscow unilaterally claimed as its own in 2022 in what Kyiv denounced as an illegal land grab.
Both sides deny deliberately targeting civilians.
Yana Lantratova, Russia’s Human Rights Commissioner, said that 86 teenagers aged 14 to 18 had been asleep inside the hostel belonging to Luhansk Pedagogical University’s Starobilsk college when Ukrainian drones attacked it during the night.
Leonid Pasechnik, the top Russian-installed official in Luhansk, said two people had been pulled from the rubble and that rescue workers were still looking for children trapped beneath the debris.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called for those responsible to be punished.
“This is a monstrous crime. An attack on an educational institution where children and young people are present,” Peskov told reporters.
“The most important thing now is to take measures to clear the rubble and provide assistance to those who are still trapped beneath it.”
Photographs and video released by the Russian authorities showed rescue workers stretchering one man out of the rubble, severely damaged buildings – one of which appeared to have partially collapsed – and fires still burning.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week promised retribution after laying red roses at the rubble of a Kyiv apartment building where a Russian missile strike had killed 24 people, including three children.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Andrew Osborn/Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Kevin Liffey)