(Reuters) – A Russian missile attack on Friday on a village school near the frontline in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region killed two women, including a teacher, and injured six, Ukrainian police said.
The 56-year-old primary school teacher and a chief accountant, 44, died in the strike on the village of Serhiivka, Ukrainian police said. Twelve employees were the building’s only occupants, the prosecutor’s office said. Ukrainian schools were not in session for students on Friday.
“Russian troops, in a direct hit, destroyed a school where civilians were located,” Ukraine’s national police said in a statement.
The Donetsk region prosecutor’s office said four men aged 54 to 69 and two women aged 24 and 34 were injured and taken to hospital, and that it had launched an investigation into the attack.
Reuters was unable immediately to verify details of the attack.
Police shared a video showing a motionless, bloodied person being lifted into an ambulance, and a woman being extracted from extensive ruins.
Groups of men, some in civilian clothing, others emergency workers in helmets, and uniformed police, walked atop the ruins, searching for survivors. Two men carefully laid a piece of green army fabric over a body.
The police said paramedics helped rescue two women from the rubble and that occupying Russian forces were responsible for the attack, which was preliminarily assessed to have been caused by an Iskander missile.
(Reporting by Elaine Monaghan; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
