Kharkiv: strike on a medical facility hours after Zelensky’s warning of a new mass attack, 62 injured and patients evacuated

A combined Russian attack with ballistic missiles and guided aerial bombs hit Kharkiv, and one of the strikes landed on a medical facility, before dawn on Tuesday, November 3. By 06:15 the injured had reached 62, Mayor Ihor Terekhov and the head of the Regional Military Administration Oleh Syniehubov announced. Authorities began transferring 226 patients to other hospitals.

Terekhov had warned residents on Telegram at about 03:23. “Kharkiv is under a combined attack with ballistic missiles and guided bombs, take care!” he wrote. A little later he confirmed that one of the strikes hit a medical facility in the Nemyshlianskyi district. The first count spoke of four injured, which rose to 25 and then to 62.

The corridor between buildings was hit

The strike landed on the corridor linking two buildings of the hospital complex, Syniehubov explained. The building of one of the medical departments was damaged, as were the windows of four multi-storey apartment blocks and ten cars. The mayor estimated that more than 1,000 panes of glass were broken in the facility and surrounding buildings. Rescuers and doctors treated the injured and helped move patients while the authorities continued to record the damage.

Kharkiv, with about 1.4 million inhabitants, is Ukraine’s second-largest city and lies just 30 kilometres from the Russian border. Since the start of the invasion it has been repeatedly attacked with missiles, bombs and drones. Only last week a Russian drone injured five people in the city, among them a four-year-old boy.

Zelensky’s warning

The attack came hours after Volodymyr Zelensky warned in his Monday, November 2 evening address that Russia is preparing a new mass strike. “We have information that Russia is preparing a new massive attack on our country, mainly against energy and transport,” he said. He assessed that Moscow may take advantage of international attention turning to Tuesday’s US midterm elections and is betting on Kyiv’s difficulties in securing Patriot air-defence missiles. Washington approved on October 30 the possible sale of 500 PAC-3 MSE missiles to Ukraine.

The Kharkiv strike followed one of the bloodiest days for civilians in Ukraine. On Monday Russian aircraft bombed a school serving as an aid distribution point in Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region, killing at least 26 people. According to Zelensky, after the first strike the Russians dropped nine more bombs on the shelter where civilians had taken cover.