As evening fell on the battered Ukrainian city of Sloviansk on Friday, there was a brief moment of relief after a day of bombardment: A 2-year-old boy was rescued from the rubble of a residential building hit by Russian missiles earlier in the day.
Photographs from the scene show men clutching at the child, covered in dust and wearing only a T-shirt and diaper, on top of the building’s ruins.
The rescue was announced by several officials, including Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, who noted that Russia had attacked Sloviansk on Good Friday of the weekend holiday for Orthodox Easter, one of the holiest days of the year.
A half-hour later, the child died in an ambulance.
He was one of at least eight people killed in Sloviansk on Friday when Russia sent a barrage of missiles into residential areas of the city, Ukrainian officials said. At least 21 people were injured, including a teenage girl whose father did not survive.
The death toll may still rise. The father of the 2-year-old and several other people are still believed to be under the rubble, the Ukrainian national police said.
Sloviansk, a Ukrainian-held city in the eastern Donetsk region, is roughly 30 miles from the front lines around Bakhmut. It has so often come under Russian attack that regional officials have implored residents to evacuate for months. In early April, it was announced that guardians who refused to leave the city could be relieved of their duties and their children forcibly evacuated.
Officials have said they did not want to resort to such measures and would continue trying to convince families to leave, the head of the children’s service of the city’s military administration told the Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne.
The death of the 2-year-old, who was not immediately identified, was a stark reminder of the toll the war has had on civilians, and particularly on children.
At least 501 Ukrainian children have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the United Nations said earlier this month, weeks after its children’s agency, UNICEF, reported that the conflict had put nearly 1.5 million children at risk of mental health issues.
Ms. Zelenska, who as a wartime first lady has made mental health care a key part of her agenda, shared her grief in an update about Friday’s attack in Sloviansk.
“Every child is a small universe for their loved ones,” she wrote on Twitter. “Losing one is an indescribable grief.”
Source : Nytimes
