Rescuers dig through Ukraine mall wreckage as Zelensky condemns 'despicable' Russian strike

Rescuers in Ukraine are continuing their search for survivors in the wreckage of a big shopping centre hit by a Russian drone strike on Friday.

Sixteen people were killed and 130 injured when two drones hit the busy centre in Kryvyi Rih in quick succession in what is known as a double-tap strike. Four people are still missing. The search and rescue operation could last for another two days.

President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the “cynical and despicable” attack in which the second drone targeted emergency workers.

The sides exchanged more fire overnight, with Ukrainian attacks said to have killed at least four people in Russia, including two children, and two people reported dead by Kyiv as a result of Russian strikes.

The death toll from Friday’s attack reached 16 after another body was retrieved from the rubble overnight, said Dnipropetrovsk regional head Oleksandr Hanzha.

“We’re doing everything possible to speed up… the search and rescue operation,” he told Ukrainian TV on Saturday morning.

He added that the work could continue for another two days because of the sheer scale of devastation and constant threats of more Russian attacks.

Rescue teams from seven other Ukrainian regions were urgently deployed on Friday evening to help search for survivors.

The huge fire covering an area of some ​​9,000 sq m has been extinguished.

In an update later on Saturday, Hanzha said that 52 injured people, including 14 children, were still in city hospitals.

Dozens of people had already undergone surgery, said Kryvyi Rih’s miltiary chief Oleksandr Vilkul.

A day of mourning is being observed across the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Dramatic footage verified by the BBC showed the second drone hitting the already burning shopping centre in Zelensky’s hometown. Russia’s military has not commented.

Vilkul said the drones had been flying at “extremely low altitudes” and described the attackers as “animals”.

The attack on the shopping centre came a day after 17 people were killed and more than 40 injured in a major Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.

Zelensky said there had been “missile and drone strikes throughout the evening and night” across Ukraine, with residential buildings and civilian infrastructure damaged.

He said one person was killed and another injured after ballistic missile strikes damaged railway infrastructure in the capital Kyiv, while three people were injured by a “brutal” drone strike on a city minibus in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.

Two people were killed in a separate Russian attack in the Kyiv region, Ukraine’s state emergencies service DSNS said.

Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said it downed a total of 457 Ukrainian drones overnight.

Two children were killed and two adults injured in a drone strike on a port town in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, according to Governor Veniamin Kondratyev.

In the western Belgorod region two people were killed and 13 injured in Ukrainian air strikes and shelling, acting Governor Alkesandr Shuvaev said.

Ukraine’s military said it had struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region overnight, causing a fire to break out.

Russian online retailer Ozon – the country’s second largest – said one of its warehouses in the region had also been hit for the first time.

This comes after a series of devastating Ukrainian attacks on logistics hubs of the largest retailer Wildberries, known as Russia’s Amazon.

Ukraine has in recent months intensified attacks on Russian energy facilities, as well as on Wildberries warehouses.

Kyiv describes them as legitimate targets because they help finance Russia’s war. Russia has said civilians are being targeted.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and currently Moscow controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory in the south-east.