An emergency crew was seen pulling the boy’s body from the rubble of a building after the early morning attack. He was wearing pajamas with a Spider-Man design.
The strike also killed the boy’s grandmother and wounded an 11-month-old child, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram. Regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said that in all, 30 people were wounded. Rescue operations were continuing.
Officials said preliminary information indicated that the Kremlin’s forces used two Iskander missiles in the attack, the same as in the previous day’s strike on the village of Hroza that killed 52 people.
In Hroza, workers at the local cemetery on Friday cut down trees and mowed grass to prepare graves for those killed. They are to be buried not far from Ukrainian soldier Andrii Kozyr, whose wake they were attending when the strike happened.
Many people in the village of around 300 lost relatives or friends in the attack. They gathered to mourn in groups in the village center, which was largely deserted except for people picking up humanitarian aid, including materials to repair their damaged houses.
In a courtyard near the café wrecked by the missile, people placed candles and flowers to honor the dead.
In Kharkiv city, one of the Friday morning missiles landed in the street, leaving a crater, and the other hit a three-story building, setting it ablaze, according to Syniehubov, the regional governor.
Debris and rubble littered the street. Surrounding buildings were blackened by the blast, which blew out windows and damaged parked cars.
Yevhen Shevchenko, a resident of a nearby nine-story building, said he was in bed when the attack occurred. “There was a blast wave, a powerful explosion. It blew out the windows and doors in the apartment,” he said.
A day earlier, a Russian Iskander ballistic missile turned a village café and store to rubble in Hroza, a village in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 51 civilians, according to Ukrainian officials. Around 60 people, including children, were attending a wake at the café when the missile hit, they said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied on Friday that Russia was responsible for the Hroza attack. He insisted, as Moscow has in the past, that the Russian military doesn’t target civilian facilities.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, attending a summit of about 50 European leaders in Spain to rally support from Ukraine’s allies, called the strike a “demonstrably brutal Russian crime” and “a completely deliberate act of terrorism.”
