UKRAINE, MEREFA, May 4 — At 9:35 a.m., Russia killed at least seven people in Merefa, Kharkiv oblast, with what, according to a preliminary investigation, was an Iskander ballistic missile.
Among the killed were two men, aged 50 and 63, and three women, aged 74, 41 and 52. Another two people, men of 68 and 59, died in the hospital from the injuries the attack caused them.
“He was everything to us,” Pavlo told Gwara Media’s journalist who was working at the impact site. He’s the son of one of the killed men. His father’s body is still in the car he drove when the missile hit. His sister, Kateryna, adds, “A part of our heart died with him.”
The explosion injured or caused an acute stress reaction to at least 31 people, including two teenagers of 16 and 17 and a two-year-old baby.
Killed and injured people have been just walking or driving, just like Kateryna and Pavlo’s father, past the impact site, said Volodymyr Usov, the head of local military administration, to Gwara.
“It’s a simple street; there are no military objects. The enemy is terrorizing our civilian infrastructure,” he added.
Merefa is a city in the southwest of Kharkiv oblast, located about 18 km (~11 miles) from Kharkiv. A Russian missile hit the road, setting fire to a house and a car, which were put out by firefighters. Local authorities said the attack damaged nearby residential buildings, outhouses, shops, a car service building, and cars.
The street the missile targeted is quiet, but nearby, people are cleaning up debris and glass from their homes. Fixing up their half-destroyed rooms and buildings.
Serhii and Yelizaveta, a married couple from Merefa, didn’t see the explosion but heard a loud rumbling. “When we got outside, we saw a mushroom (cloud),” Serhii says. The blast wave broke the window and destroyed the roof of their building.
Yurii, one of the locals, tells us that he had a job out of town when his mother and then his wife called him, both terrified.
“My wife was panicking and couldn’t coherently say what happened. But I understood that she’s alive. She was lucky,” Yurii says.
His wife, Mariia, decided to stay in bed a little bit longer this morning — lying in bed, under the covers, with her puppy.
“It’s impossible to predict,” Mariia tells us. “We didn’t even have a second to hide, and you won’t. I was covered entirely with the blanket, and that saved us. Everything around us has fallen. We ran and hid after.”
Everyone in their building survived. Yurii’s brother’s wife was killed by a piece of shrapnel as she was going to work. Her name was Liuba. Her corpse is lying on the street that became the epicenter of the Russian attack, covered with a soft pink blanket.
Her husband keeps his silence. Helps Yurii clean up his flat, wrecked by the explosion. We don’t manage to get his name.
Mariia says, “We’re just shocked. I don’t cry anymore. We (have to pass through) shock and keep living.”
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