At least eight including toddler are killed after rocket attack on apartment building in Ukraine

Russia shelled a block of flats in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk today, killing at least eight people, including a toddler.

S-300 missiles rained down on a residential area, damaging 10 apartment buildings and other sites.

The strike came in the afternoon, with rescuers, paramedics and police scrambling to retrieve those trapped beneath the wreckage.

The governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, warned that more people could be buried under the rubble.

A two-year-old was pulled from the rubble of a shelled block of flats and died in an ambulance, authorities said.

Sloviansk lies in a part of the Donetsk region that is under Ukrainian control. It is close to territory controlled by Russia.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack is just another example of Russia’s brutality during its invasion. 

‘The evil state once again demonstrates its essence. Just killing people in broad daylight. Ruining, destroying all life,’ Zelensky wrote on his official Telegram. 

Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska sent her condolences to the family of the two-year-old killed during this time of ‘indescribable grief’. 

The head of the Sloviansk city military administration, Vadym Liakh, said: ‘Today’s attack on Sloviansk was one of the most massive since the beginning of this year.

‘There were several strikes on different districts of the city.’ 

Rescue operations in the areas hit are still ongoing. 

Workers were seen digging for survivors on the top floor of a Soviet-era residential building, with smoke billowing from homes on fire across the street.

The street beneath, including a playground, was covered in a layer of concrete dust and debris.

‘I live on the opposite side of the street and I was sleeping a little when I heard this huge boom and I ran out from my flat,’ 59-year-old resident Larisa said.

‘I was really scared and in a state of shock,’ she said, adding the impact of the shelling had broken her windows and sent shards of glass flying throughout her home.

‘I heard a woman screaming, “there’s a child here, there’s a child here”. She was screaming so much.’

Sloviansk is 45 kilometres (27 miles) north-west of Bakhmut, the current epicentre of fighting.

The battle for Bakhmut is heating up again, analysts and Russian officials said on Friday, as Ukrainian defenders of the devastated city resisted a coordinated three-pronged attack by the Kremlin’s forces and efforts to stop supplies from reaching them.

‘Russia has re-energised its assault’ on Bakhmut, the UK’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) said of recent developments in the eastern Ukraine city, which for eight and a half months has been the stage for the war’s longest and bloodiest fight.

‘The Ukrainian defense still holds the western districts of the town but has been subjected to particularly intense Russian artillery fire over the previous 48 hours,’ the ministry’s assessment said.

Until recently, a notorious private Russian military contractor, the Wagner Group, spearheaded the campaign to take Bakhmut, making slow, grinding progress at the cost of thousands of lives on both sides. Now, regular Russian units have joined the thrust.

Military analysts have said that seizing Bakhmut would have public relations and tactical military value for Moscow though was unlikely to prove decisive in the war’s outcome. The Russian Defense Ministry also noted the stepped-up fighting in western parts of the city Friday.

‘Wagner assault detachments are engaged in high-intensity combat operations to capture areas of western Bakhmut with airborne forces supporting on the flanks,’ the ministry said in a statement.

It added: ‘The units of the airborne forces operating on the flanks are providing support to the assault squads and stop the enemy’s attempts to deliver ammunition to the city and bring in reserves.’

Bakhmut lies in Donetsk province, one of four provinces Russia illegally annexed last autumn. 

Moscow controls about half of the province. Bakhmut is a stepping stone to seizing the remaining half.

Ukrainian officials have said they are buying time by depleting Russian forces in the battle while Kyiv prepares a counteroffensive. 

Zelensky argues that if Russia wins the Bakhmut battle, Russian President Vladimir Putin might be able to begin building international support for a deal that would require Ukraine to make unacceptable compromises to end the war.

On Friday, Ukraine retrieved the bodies of 82 of its soldiers from Russian-controlled territory, a government ministry said.

Ukrainian and Russian forces have held regular prisoner exchanges during Moscow’s full-scale invasion, which is now in its 14th month. 

Russia holds swathes of territory in Ukraine’s east and south.

The Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories gave no details about how it retrieved the bodies, but said it was carried out ‘in accordance with the norms of the Geneva Convention’.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Zelensky discussed ramping up military support to Ukraine in a phone call on Friday, Downing Street said.

Sunak told the Ukrainian president that Britain and its allies ‘needed to continue to ensure Ukraine was in the strongest possible position to build on its recent battlefield successes’.

The two leaders discussed the latest developments in Russia’s invasion, with Sunak paying tribute to the efforts of Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut.

Sunak also said a gruesome video that purportedly shows the beheading of a Ukrainian soldier was ‘appalling’ and that those responsible had to be held to account.

Zelensky has called on world leaders to respond to the video, which the Kremlin said was ‘horrible’ but needed to be verified.

The phone call between the two leaders came after an alleged leak of US classified defence documents online appeared to lay bare military secrets in Ukraine, including claims that up to 50 UK special forces personnel have been deployed to the war-torn nation.

However, the MoD warned against taking allegations contained in the reported leak at ‘face value’.