Kyiv resident Iryna Plechova stands in front of her shattered home, a multi-storey building on the west bank of the Dnieper, and says this is the second time in a short period that they have been attacked. A couple of weeks ago, the film studio where she works was hit.
But last night's attack, at two o'clock, was extremely powerful, she says in the public service company Suspilne's
.
When my husband and I ran out of the house to escape, we saw that it was on fire and that the roof of our house was partially destroyed (...) The second and third staircases have burned down completely, including our apartment. We don't know for sure yet if everyone is alive, we hope so.
Extensive rescue work takes place in silence, with breaks to listen for possible survivors. Teams have equipment that can detect heartbeats and other small signs of life.
The homeless
Last night's Russian attacks hit residential neighbourhoods in Kyiv, killing about ten people and injuring up to a hundred.
In an area on the east side of the city, at least five high-rise buildings have been hit and destroyed.
"Half the building has been destroyed. The roof is gone," Sabina Mambetova, 32, who lives in one of the high-rise buildings, told AFP on the scene.
Now I'm without an apartment, alone with my child. I don't know what to do now.
Another woman who lives in the neighbourhood, Anna, tells Suspilne that she and her husband ran after their cat when they fled into the street:
The cat is alive, thank God. My husband, I and the dog are standing in the parking lot. We have to start our lives over completely. They say there is nothing left there, that everything that was there is gone.
Shaken underground
In all, up to 20 residential buildings were damaged in the unusually severe attacks last night, according to Ukrainian authorities. Pictures show how tall apartment buildings have been completely blown out, or blackened by fires. On the streets outside, there is a lot of rubble among the wrecked car bodies and trees with bare branches.
As on many previous nights during the four and a half years that the war has raged, Kyiv residents poured into metro stations to seek shelter.
"We were inside the shelter and felt it shaking. The ceiling and the floor, everything," 24-year-old Serhii Budko told the AP.
Some did not have time to leave their homes before they began to collapse around or above them. Rescue services have carried many injured people out on stretchers from the affected buildings.
