Suspected cluster munitions have struck several buildings in Kharkiv after a series of explosions were captured on camera in Ukraine’s second-largest city.
Sky News has pinpointed the videos to northeastern Kharkiv and a military expert said the shelling appears to be the classic pattern for a cluster munition.
Cluster munitions are a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions – with the explosive bomblets designed to kill personnel and destroy vehicles.
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A clip posted to social media shows multiple explosions striking a building in quick succession.
Footage captures the harrowing sound of the shelling as smoke fills the surrounding area.
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Another video shows a similar series of quick explosions on another building from a distance below a cloud of thick white smoke – with a woman heard sobbing in the background.
It comes as the interior ministry in Ukraine said on Monday that dozens have been killed in mass rocket strikes by Russian forces in Kharkiv.
“Kharkiv has just been massively fired upon by grads (rockets). Dozens of dead and hundreds of wounded,” Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said in a post on Facebook.
Key developments:
• Putin orders nuclear deterrent forces to be put on high alert
• Police on high alert in Kyiv as ‘dozens killed in mass shelling’ in Kharkiv
• Ukraine and Russia hold talks on Belarusian-Ukrainian border
• Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says next 24 hours “crucial”
• Russian bank run as rouble plunges to all-time low
• ‘Russian saboteurs’ shoot dead schoolgirl and her parents
Peace talks between delegates from Russia and Ukraine in Belarus are currently under way, as satellite images showed a more than three-mile-long Russian military convoy nearing Kyiv and Ukraine’s president warned of a “crucial” 24 hours.
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There were more Russian air attacks and fierce clashes between the two sides overnight as Russian forces continued to close in on the Ukrainian capital.
Ukrainian officials said that blasts were heard in the capital Kyiv and in the major city of Kharkiv on Monday morning,
while a residential building in Chernihiv in northern Ukraine was on fire after being struck by a missile.
However, Russian forces have met an outgunned but determined resistance in Kyiv and other cities including Kharkiv, with an undeterred Russian President Vladimir Putin putting Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert on Sunday in the face of a barrage of Western-led reprisals for his invasion of Ukraine.