KHARKIV, Ukraine: A 10-year-old and his grandmother were killed on Friday when Russian missiles smashed into Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, just hours after another attack left dozens dead at a wake in a nearby village.
Rescue workers in Kharkiv were extinguishing fires next to charred vehicles, and twisted missile fragments lay in a deep crater in the center of the city, an AFP journalist at the scene said.
Multiple-story buildings surrounding the debris-strewn blast site were scarred by the impact of two cruise missiles, with dozens of windows blown out. Dazed residents walked beneath the skeletal housing blocks.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack had killed a 10-year-old boy and described the strikes as another example of “Russian terror” in a statement offering condolences to the child’s family.
Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said later that municipal workers had retrieved another body.
“Rescue workers found the body of a 68-year-old woman — the grandmother of the killed 10-year-old boy and his injured 11-month-old brother,” he said.
Another 28 people had been wounded, he added.
In an earlier statement, Synegubov described how two Russian missiles had landed in the city. One hit a road in the center of the city; the other slammed into a three-story building, causing a fire that sent plumes of black smoke into the sky.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city that lies in a region bordering Russia, has been under persistent Russian shelling since Moscow’s forces invaded in February last year.
The strikes there came as Synegubov updated the death toll from Thursday’s missile strike on a village in the Kharkiv region that had killed dozens of people less than 24 hours earlier.
“Fifty-two people have died as a result of this missile attack because one more person died in a medical facility,” Synegubov told state-run television, raising the toll by one.
The Kremlin, responding to questions from reporters on the village strike, again insisted that Russian forces do not target civilians in Ukraine.
“Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
Those killed in the village of Groza had gathered at a cafe for the wake for a fallen Ukrainian soldier.
The strike provoked outrage from Western leaders while the United Nations said the attack could amount to war crime.
The soldier being commemorated was killed a month after Russia invaded in February last year. He had been buried in the central city of Dnipro — away from his home village, which was then under Russian occupation.
He was reburied in Groza on Thursday morning. His wife and son, also a soldier, were both killed in the strike, officials said.
Around 20 rescuers from Kharkiv city were cleaning the rubble from the destroyed cafe and nearby shop on Friday morning.
Oleksiy and some of his family came to the cemetery to mark out graves for his sister and brother-in-law killed in the attack — their bodies had been taken by police to Kharkiv.
“I don’t know when we will be able to bury them,” he told AFP. “My brother’s body was preserved, but his wife’s head was missing.”
Nearby in the cemetery, a recently dug grave was covered with fresh flowers and a Ukrainian flag. It was the grave of 49-year-old Andriy Kozir, the soldier that villagers had gathered to pay hommage to when a missile hit their cafe.
“Everyone at the wake died,” said 73-year-old Valentyna Koziyenko, who lived opposite the destroyed cafe.
“The strike happened just after people went in,” she told AFP, adding that the blast from the strike had torn the roof off her building.
“How did the Russians know that so many people were in there?” said Koziyenko. “Maybe someone told them.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Friday described the Kharkiv attacks as “atrocities” that “prove that global support for Ukraine must be sustained and increased.”
Swathes of the Kharkiv region were captured by Russian forces in the early days of their invasion, launched in late February 2022.
Ukrainian forces clawed back much of that territory in a lightning offensive late last year.
Deadly new strike as Ukraine mourns dozens killed at wake
https://arab.news/8rxry
Deadly new strike as Ukraine mourns dozens killed at wake
- Multiple-story buildings surrounding the debris-strewn blast site were scarred by the impact of two cruise missiles
- President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack had killed a 10-year-old boy and described the strikes as another example of “Russian terror”
UK cyclists to ride 550km in Saudi Arabia to save children with heart defects
- The H&K Cycle Club was the first team to take the Hejaz route, and their endeavour has since 2022 inspired hundreds of other cyclists to follow suit
- The cyclists expect to face scorching heat, brutal headwinds, sandstorms, and long no-U-turn stretches of roads, along with physical and mental exhaustion
LONDON: A cycling team from London set out on Sunday on a 550km journey from Makkah to Madinah in Saudi Arabia to raise funds for children in developing countries with congenital heart defects.
This is the fifth year that Shamsul Abdin, the head of the H&K Cycle Club, and 40 riders aged between 18 and 65, are taking on the challenge through the Hejaz region.
Abdin told Arab News that the “Hijrah Ride” was a replication of the journey made by Prophet Muhammad over 1,400 years ago, when he migrated from Makkah to Madinah, where he established the first city-state of Islam. This migration, known as Hijrah, also marked the beginning of the Islamic Hijri calendar.
The H&K Cycle Club has expanded from just six riders 14 years ago to more than 40 members from various cities across the UK, including London, Manchester, Oxford, and Birmingham. In November, they began their training in the freezing temperatures of the UK, aiming to cycle over 100 kilometers each day within 6 to 7 hours for a 4-day ride in Saudi Arabia. On Wednesday, they are expected to arrive in Madinah.
They have cycled throughout the UK and parts of Europe, riding from London to Istanbul to raise funds for various causes through Muntada Aid, a charity that works on projects in developing countries and organizes the “Hijrah Ride”.
They were also the first cycling team to take the Hejaz route, and their endeavour has since inspired hundreds of other cyclists to follow suit. Abdin has seen Saudi Arabia become more bike-friendly over the past five years, with cycling lanes integrated into city development, while drivers, locals, and authorities are now more aware of cyclists on the roads.
The cyclists expect to face scorching heat, brutal headwinds, sandstorms, and long no-U-turn stretches of roads, along with physical and mental exhaustion. For many riders, this will be their fifth ride in Hejaz. Some of them include Uber and bus drivers, business analysts, and even entrepreneurs, according to Abdin.
“The headwind feels like climbing a mountain; it’s a constant resistance. To overcome this challenge, we ride in a peloton, taking turns at the front. One person heads into the wind while the others line up behind, shielded from the gusts. After a while, we rotate, allowing everyone a chance to lead,” Abdin explained.
Almost £923,000 has been raised by the “Hijrah Ride” since its inception, to reach a target of one million pounds this year. Some of the money went into emergency aid programs in Gaza and Sudan. Muntada Aid aims to raise about £250,000 for its flagship project, “Little Hearts,” which will fund 150 surgeries for children with congenital heart defects in Pakistan and Bangladesh this year.
“I fell in love with this project, which gives children the opportunity to live up to their potential as adults, truly,” said Abdin, who was awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in December for his contribution to charitable fundraising.
The riders will be escorted by two vehicles, one in front and one in the rear, carrying paramedics and media staff, along with food and water. They will split into two groups based on their cycling powers. Along the route, they will pass several locations, including Jeddah on the Red Sea, King Abdullah Economic City, Rabigh, Masturah, and Badr, before reaching the elevated roads of Madinah, where their journey, which started with performing Umrah in Makkah, will end.
Muntada Aid is a part of Al-Muntada Trust, which was founded in 1986 by a group of Middle Eastern students, including individuals from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to address the famine crisis in Ethiopia. Since then, the organization has assisted children in 17 countries, including Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Kosovo, Bosnia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mali, and Niger. They focus on developing infrastructure in education, health, water and sanitation sectors.
Nasrun Mir, the marketing director of Muntada Aid, told Arab News that they support “Hijrah Ride” with financial backing and logistics, and that they have obtained permits through communication with the Saudi Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Saudi embassy in London, and the British Consulate in Jeddah.
Mir, who is joining the journey as part of the media team this week, said that the reception in Saudi Arabia could not be friendlier.
“People offer us free food and drinks. They want to have conversations with us. They want to know what we do. In the Middle East, there is still no concept of using sports as a tool for charity. The general idea is that if I want to give money to the charity, I’ll give it to them. You don’t need to run. You don’t need to cycle,” Mir said.
In one incident, a local community prevented the riders from passing through their village unless they disembarked and sat down to eat with them. In particular sections of the road near Madinah, a Saudi police vehicle has escorted the riders for a few kilometers, he added.
“There have been incidents where people have stopped us from eating our own food during the break. They literally took our food and said, ‘No, you come to our village; you cannot eat your food. You have to have food, which we will prepare.’ This delayed ride for a couple of hours,” Mir said.
