Russian airstrike on house in Izium killed entire families on March 9. Their fate remained unknown until city was liberated - CNN. PHOTOS
On March 9, 54 people, almost half of the building’s residents, died in a residential complex on 2 Pershotravneva street in Izium, Kharkiv region. Whole families have been identified, including the Yacentyuks, the Kravchenkos, and the Stolpakovs.
This is stated in the article by Tila Rebane and Olga Voytovych for CNN, reports Censor.NЕТ.
The fate of the residents of Izium remained largely unknown until a few weeks ago when Ukrainian forces liberated the town after six months of Russian occupation.
A mass burial site was discovered on the outskirts. Most of the residents of building No. 2 on Pershotravneva street are buried there among more than 400 graves, some graves were with names.
Журналісти поговорили з уцілілими мешканцями будинку та родичами загиблих.
Михайло Яцентюк 9 березня вийшов із підвалу, щоб приготувати чаю для онуки. Коли він прийшов до тями через пів години після удару, вся середня частина його будинку була зруйнована; вогнем було охоплено підвал, де він переховувався разом із родиною та сусідами.
That day Yacentyuk lost seven family members - his wife Natalia, aunt Zinaida, daughter Olga and her husband Vitaly, 15-year-old grandson Dima, 10-year-old Oleksiy, and 3-year-old granddaughter Arishka.
The population of Izyum before the war was more than 40,000 people. In this town, classmates remain friends for life, and families live in the same house for generations. Anastasia Vodoriz and Olena Stolpakova grew up together. Vodoriz describes the Stolpakovs as a "very happy, close-knit" family. "Friends always gathered there because we had a lot of fun there," she told CNN from the Czech Republic, where she has lived for the past four years.
When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, friends urged Elena to leave Izyum, but her father Oleksandr refused to leave their home at 2 Pershotravneva Street.
Local residents say that after the airstrike, Russian troops attacked the building with tanks.
The rubble began to be dismantled at the end of March; the first bodies were recovered a little less than a month after the attack. "It was clear then that people died as families," says Tetyana Pryvalikhina, another resident of Pershotravneva Street 2, who left the city, but lost her mother, Lyubov Petrova, during an airstrike.
The Pryvalikhiny's sister Viktoria went to the place every day in the hope of finding her mother. "People were faceless. It was very difficult to recognize. Headless bodies were taken out, arms and legs were taken out separately," Pryvalikhina's sister recalls.
The Stolpakov family - Elena and her husband Dima, daughters Olesya and Sasha, Elena's parents Oleksandr and Tanya, her younger sister Masha and grandmother Luda were found only in May. The only surviving member of the family was Elena's other grandmother, Galya, who lived at the other end of the city.
According to Yacentyuk, all but 12 people who died in this apartment building were buried in a mass burial site in a pine forest near the city. Many families said they were not allowed to rebury or visit the graves of their loved ones while the city was under Russian occupation.
