The damaged building of the FSD Foundation office / Photo: Kharkiv Regional Military Administration
Around five in the morning on July 24, Russia attacked Kharkiv and its surrounding areas. The enemy used, among other things, an Iskander-M missile. The Russians struck the building housing the office of the Swiss FSD Foundation, which is demining the Kharkiv region, a private house, and an eco-market near the city.
This was reported by our correspondent in Kharkiv, Anna Chernenko, on Hromadske Radio.
“Today at five in the morning, the whole city was woken up by the sound of explosions. At half past six, there was a strike on the outskirts of Kharkiv, and there are victims. The target was the building where the office of the deminers, the FSD’s backers, is based. Several floors of the building collapsed. There were also several vehicles in the yard that sappers used to get to the fields to carry out work. Five of them were damaged. Fortunately, no one was injured. Only a security guard was there at night. At the time of the strike, he was making his morning rounds, which saved him.»
The Russians struck another target in the private sector of the city, hitting a house and causing a fire, Chernenko said.
According to the correspondent, there is a private ecopark near Kharkiv in the village of Lisne. Access to it is currently limited because Russians often strike these areas, including with anti-aircraft guns.
“Some animals have been evacuated for the second time. This time, the strike was on the stables, and the Ecopark’s employees saved the horses. Two people were also injured. There are photos and videos showing how big the fire caused by these strikes was. 280 square meters burned down. But so far, no information about the animals has been reported, so we can hope they were not injured.
There are quite a few animals in the Ecopark, and recently, tiger cubs were born there. The Ecopark does everything possible to evacuate animals, but it is quite difficult to organize for large predators. Earlier, the Ecopark’s territory was a frontline area, heavily covered with shells, so we had to demine it later», — Chernenko says.
According to her, Kharkiv was attacked with Iskander-M missiles. The correspondent claims that the Russians have been using them very often to strike the Kharkiv region over the past ten days or so.
“Moreover, even small settlements are affected by this type of weapon. Law enforcement officials reported that some of the fragments still have markings on them indicating that the missiles were manufactured this year.»