(Reuters) -Ukraine’s military said on Saturday that Russian forces had 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 had destroyed the boarding school in the border town of Sudzha, “even though dozens of civilians were there.”
A statement by the Ukrainian military’s General Staff said that as of 10 p.m. (2000 GMT), 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. Russia’s Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zelenskiy, writing in English on X, 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.
At least one unofficial Russian military blogger said Ukrainian forces were behind the strike.
Ukrainian forces have held swathes of the Kursk region since staging a major cross-border incursion last August.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski, Serhiy Karaziy and Oleksandr KozhukharEditing by Nick Zieminski and Diane Craft)
