MOSCOW (Reuters) – At least four people were killed and 35 children were wounded in an overnight Ukrainian drone attack on a student dormitory in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, Russian officials said on Friday.
Reuters was not able to immediately verify what happened independently and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which is fighting to try to return Luhansk, one of four regions Russia unilaterally claimed as its own in 2022 in what Kyiv said was an illegal land grab.
Yana Lantratova, the Russia's Human Rights Commissioner, said that 86 teenagers aged between 14 to 18 had been sleeping inside Luhansk Pedagogical University's Starobilsk college when Ukrainian drones attacked it.
"The Ukrainian armed forces carried out a targeted strike on sleeping children," Lantratova said in a statement.
Leonid Pasechnik, the top Russia-installed official in Luhansk, said two people had been pulled from the rubble and that rescue workers were still looking for children trapped beneath the debris.
Photo and video released by the Russian authorities showed rescue workers stretchering one man out of the rubble, severely damaged buildings, one of which appeared to have partially collapsed, and fires still burning.