Sixteen people are dead and over a hundred are injured after a shopping center in Kryvyi Rih was struck twice. The second blast was aimed directly at the emergency crews rushing in to help.
You hear the explosion. You rush to the burning building to pull people out. Then the sky screams again, and the second bomb drops right on top of you. That is the brutal reality of a “double-tap” strike.
Rescuers in Kryvyi Rih, President Zelensky’s hometown, spent the night digging through the twisted metal and concrete of a shopping mall. A Russian drone slammed into the busy building on Friday. As firefighters and medics rushed to the scene, a second drone hit the exact same spot.
Sixteen people are dead. Another 130 are injured, including 23 children. Nine people are still missing in the rubble.
Zelensky did not hold back, calling the double strike “cynical and despicable.”
Local officials are furious. Kryvyi Rih Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul said the drones were flying at “extremely low altitudes” to avoid radar, calling the attackers “animals.”
“There are missing people who are not responding to calls,” Vilkul added.
The violence did not stop there. Across the country, the sirens kept wailing. A warehouse fire in Kyiv killed one person. Drones hit Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, and Kharkiv, leaving a trail of bodies. Just on Thursday, a massive attack on the capital killed 17 people.
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Ukraine is hitting back, too. The military launched deep strikes into Russia, targeting oil refineries, military airfields, and the massive warehouses of Wildberries, an online retail giant. Kyiv says these sites fuel the Russian war machine.
But back in Kryvyi Rih, the politics of the war do not matter much today. Specially trained psychologists are sitting with the survivors in the dirt. The rescue teams from four different regions are still pulling bodies from the ashes. The mall is gone, and the people who just went shopping for the weekend are never coming home.
