Four men carry a body on a stretcher, wrapped in a bag, a stone’s throw from a children’s playground in Brovary, Ukraine, where the Interior Minister’s helicopter crashed against an asylum this Wednesday.
The tragedy, which caused at least fourteen deaths – including Minister Denis Monastirski – occurred shortly after eight in the morning. He is the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to be killed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began nearly eleven months ago.
The device struck next to a 14-story residential building and a kindergarten, where he killed a child and injured at least 11 othersin this city of about 100,000 east of kyiv.
Dmitro Serbin, who was in his apartment when the EC-225 Super Puma helicopter crashed, ran to help the boys as soon as he saw the flames above the asylum.
“The children were crying, looking for their parents. Their faces were cut and covered in blood,” Serbin told AFP.
“We took a girl out, I wrapped her in a jacket, she had wounds on her face (…) she wasn’t shaking or crying,” he told AFP.
“She probably didn’t understand what was happening. She wasn’t shaking, she wasn’t crying. I held her in my arms,” he added.
According to the rescue services, 25 people were hospitalized.
At the scene of the accident, the debris they were later visible near apartment buildings.
“I broke windows and doors”
Dmytro Serbine remembers the moment of the accident perfectly. “I heard a buzz and turned to look out the window. I thought it was a drone. I saw flames,” says this man, who was one of the first to help.
“I immediately ran out and jumped the fence. I broke windows and doors. Two policemen and another man were with me. We started evacuating the children from the daycare center. My wife took some of them home. They looked for their parents, they cried“, he continues.
“I heard a buzz and then a crash,” testifies Glib Kassyan, who was at a friend’s house and who at first paid no attention to the explosion, against a backdrop of war and periodic Russian bombing.
“Then I heard screams and saw children running over the fence. I started helping them, giving them first aid. There were a lot of them,” she recalls.
“One boy had a burn on his head. Another girl had bloody cuts and bruises. We treated the wounds with hydrogen peroxide, put bandages on them, gave them sweets and put them in front of a cartoon,” explains Kasyan.
Later the boys met their parents. Glib says he saw no serious injuries among them. “Most had bruises and cuts“, he specifies.
Anna, mother of little Viktoria, three and a half years old, is in shock. Her daughter is an asylum survivor.
“The important thing is that our daughter is still alive. Thank God, she feels well. She is unharmed,” he told AFP.
The family fled the northern Ukrainian town of Dymerka after their home was damaged in a bombing raid in March, shortly after Russia invaded the country on 24 February.
“We have escaped from one catastrophe and ended up in another. We couldn’t live there and the kindergarten is destroyed here,” he notes.
The Ukrainian government has announced an investigation to determine the causes of what President Volodymyr Zelensky described as a “terrible tragedy”.
The helicopter in which Monastyrsky was traveling was heading towards a “hot spot” of fighting at the time, according to the Ukrainian president’s office.
Source: AFP
B. C
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.