INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A 10-year-old and his grandmother were killed on Friday when Russian missiles smashed into Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, just hours after
another attack left dozens dead at a wake in a nearby village.Rescue workers in Kharkiv were extinguishing fires next to charred vehicles,
and twisted missile fragments lay in a deep crater in the center of the city, an AFP journalist at the scene said.Multiple-story buildings
surrounding the debris-strewn blast site were scarred by the impact of two cruise missiles, with dozens of windows blown out
Dazed residents walked beneath the skeletal housing blocks.President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack had killed a 10-year-old boy and
described the strikes as another example of "Russian terror" in a statement offering condolences to the child's family.Kharkiv regional
the grandmother of the killed 10-year-old boy and his injured 11-month-old brother," he said.Another 28 people had been wounded, he added.In
an earlier statement, Synegubov described how two Russian missiles had landed in the city
One hit a road in the center of the city; the other slammed into a three-story building, causing a fire that sent plumes of black smoke into
the sky.Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city that lies in a region bordering Russia, has been under persistent Russian shelling since
Moscow's forces invaded in February last year.Attack on soldier's wakeThe strikes there came as Synegubov updated the death toll from
Thursday's missile strike on a village in the Kharkiv region that had killed dozens of people less than 24 hours earlier."Fifty-two people
have died as a result of this missile attack because one more person died in a medical facility," Synegubov told state-run television,
raising the toll by one.The Kremlin, responding to questions from reporters on the village strike, again insisted that Russian forces do not
spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.Those killed in the village of Hroza had gathered at a cafe for the wake of a fallen Ukrainian
soldier.The strike provoked outrage from Western leaders while the United Nations said the attack could amount to a war crime.The soldier
being commemorated was killed a month after Russia invaded in February last year
Hroza on Thursday morning
His wife and son, also a soldier, were both killed in the strike, officials said.Around 20 rescuers from Kharkiv city were cleaning the
rubble from the destroyed cafe and nearby shop on Friday morning.'Everyone died'Oleksiy and some of his family came to the cemetery to mark
will be able to bury them," he told AFP
"My brother's body was preserved, but his wife's head was missing."Nearby in the cemetery, a recently dug grave was covered with fresh
flowers and a Ukrainian flag
It was the grave of 49-year-old Andriy Kozir, the soldier that villagers had gathered to pay homage to when a missile hit their
cafe."Everyone at the wake died," said 73-year-old Valentyna Koziyenko, who lived opposite the destroyed cafe."The strike happened just
after people went in," she told AFP, adding that the blast from the strike had torn the roof off her building."How did the Russians know
the Kharkiv attacks as "atrocities" that "prove that global support for Ukraine must be sustained and increased."Swathes of the Kharkiv
region were captured by Russian forces in the early days of their invasion, launched in late February 2022.Ukrainian forces clawed back much
of that territory in a lightning offensive late last year.
