Ukraine: Four confirmed dead following Russian missile strike on boarding school in Kursk

Ukraine’s military says that Russian forces have struck a boarding school housing people preparing for evacuation in a part of Russia’s Kursk region held by Ukrainian forces, killing at least four people.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the attack on Saturday had destroyed the boarding school in the border town of Sudzha, “even though dozens of civilians were there.”

The attack was part of a barrage of drones and missiles launched at Ukraine, that killed 12 people and damaged dozens of residential buildings as well as energy infrastructure across the country.

Ukraine’s Emergency Services said that a Russian missile struck a residential building in the central city of Poltava, killing eight people.

Emergency services had earlier reported 17 injured, including four children.

Pictures posted on the Telegram messaging app showed the building with several top floors smashed and thick columns of smoke rising into the sky.

Firefighters and dozens of rescuers were searching through the rubble and carrying the dead out on stretchers.

The Russian defence ministry responded saying Ukraine had carried out the missile strike at the dormitory of the boarding school.

A statement by the Ukrainian military’s General Staff said rescue efforts to clear rubble were proceeding.

Four people had been killed and 84 had been rescued or received medical assistance, the statement said.

Four of the injured were in a serious condition.

Reuters could not independently verify the Ukrainian account.

Zelenskiy said the incident exposed Russia as “a state devoid of civility”.

“This is how Russia wages war?Sudzha, Kursk region, Russian territory, a boarding school with civilians preparing to evacuate,” Zelenskiy wrote.

“A Russian aerial bomb. They destroyed the building even though dozens of civilians were there ... This is how Russia waged war against Chechnya decades ago. They killed Syrians the same way. Russian bombs destroy Ukrainian homes the same way.”

An earlier general staff statement said a Russian guided or glide bomb had hit the boarding school in the late afternoon.

“The strike was deliberate. At the time of the strike, dozens of local residents were inside the building, preparing for evacuation,” it said.

A military spokesperson, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, had earlier said in a video posted on Facebook that nearly 100 people were under rubble at the site, which he said had housed mostly elderly and infirm people.