KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine called off search and rescue operations on Tuesday at the rubble of an apartment building in the eastern city of Dnipro where at least 44 people were killed in a Russian missile attack.
The State Emergency Service said 20 people were still unaccounted after Saturday’s attack and that the 44 confirmed dead included five children. Thirty-nine people had been rescued from the rubble and a total of 79 had been hurt, it said.
“At 1:00 p.m. on January 17, search and rescue operations in the city of Dnipro at the site of the rocket attack were completed,” the emergency service wrote on the Telegram messaging app under a photograph from the scene.
The attack was the deadliest for civilians since the start a three-month Russian missile bombardment campaign. Regional authorities said on Tuesday the body of a child was among the last pulled out of the rubble.
Ukraine says the apartment building was struck by a Russian Kh-22 missile. Russia, which invaded Ukraine last February, said its wave of missile strikes on Saturday did not target any residential buildings.
(Reporting by Max Hunder and Aleksandar Vasovic, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
