Victims of the strike on Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district died in a basement shelter

Most of the Kyiv residents killed in the missile strike on an apartment building in the Darnytskyi district of Kyiv on July 6 were in the building’s basement, which had been set up as a shelter.

This is being reported by city residents on social media.

According to Kyiv resident Volodymyr Hutsul, who published a post on Facebook, this is evident from photographs released by the Kyiv Directorate of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.

“These photographs from the Kyiv Directorate of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine show that during the shelling on July 6, the missile that struck the apartment building in the Darnytskyi district partially destroyed the basement, which contained a shelter. It is listed on the city’s shelter map, and the fold-down benches along the walls indicate that the basement was specially fitted out as a shelter. It should be understood that this is a relatively new monolithic frame-construction building; however, the explosion was of such force that it reached the basement as well,” — Hutsul wrote.

Another social media user described what happened briefly: “The missile hit the lower floor of the building, and the shelter was simply buried.”

Thus, people who had complied with the evacuation order to take shelter found themselves at the epicenter of the destruction. The basement, officially included in the city’s shelter map and specially equipped to protect residents, was partially destroyed as a result of the strike.