Rescue workers combed through the rubble of damaged apartments in the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, a day after Russian strikes killed at least seven people.
Pokrovsk sits just 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the eastern frontline, where Moscow says it is gaining ground and repelling Ukrainian attacks.
Two missiles — launched 40 minutes apart damaged residential buildings, a hotel, cafes, shops and administrative buildings on Monday, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk region’s military administration said.
AFP correspondents on the ground saw rescuers evacuating survivors from the rubble of a five-storey building, and carrying the wounded into ambulances.
Seven people were killed in the strike on Monday evening and 81 were wounded, including two children, Kyrylenko said.
Those killed included a high-ranking emergency official of Donetsk region, said Igor Klymenko, Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs.
“We are resuming the demolition of rubble,” Klymenko said early Tuesday after the rescuers “were forced to suspend work for the night due to the high threat of repeated shelling.”
The attack struck a building with a pizzeria on the ground floor that is a popular dining spot for volunteers, military and journalists, an AFP photographer confirmed.
The building’s upper floors were damaged.
In late June, Russia struck the Ria Pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk, killing 13 and wounding dozens more.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that Moscow had struck a residential building, and shared a video on social media of civilians helping wounded people and rescuers clearing rubble from a building that had lost its top floor.
The footage also showed a second building that appeared heavily damaged.
Pokrovsk had a pre-war population of around 60,000 people.
