KYIV: As Russian missiles rained on Kyiv overnight in Moscow’s biggest attack on Ukraine’s capital in months, Anna Balamutova grabbed her children and ran to a shelter, saying they were saved by a “miracle”.

Outside their home in Kyiv’s Sviatyshynsky district, rescuers worked through the rubble of heavily destroyed buildings. A woman sat on a stool, caressing a body covered in a blue sheet that lay on the grass. Officials said at least eight people were killed in the attack and that Moscow had launched 70 missiles and 145 drones at Ukraine.

Balamutova, who left the city of Pavlograd further east earlier in the war as it increasingly came under attack, said her family was lucky to have made it to a nearby shelter.

“If I lived further, I would not have been able to physically manage with two children... To pick them up in the middle of the night and run from ballistic missiles,” the 36-year-old said. “It was just a miracle that we were saved by the fact that the alarm was raised and we came down immediately.”

She ran with her five-year-old and 14-year-old during a wave of explosions.

“People ran in blood, some were carried, screaming, children, it was very terrible... I don’t have any explanation how this can happen in the modern world,” she said. Ukraine has been pounded incessantly by Russia since Moscow invaded in February 2022, with Thursday’s attack the latest in a spate of deadly strikes on civilian areas over recent weeks.

It came hours after US President Donald Trump criticized Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky for not ceding Crimea—annexed by Russia in 2014 -- to Moscow as part of a peace deal. Olena Davydiuk, who was woken up by explosions and ran outside as “windows and doors started falling out”, said she had no doubt about Russia’s aims.

“Why is Russia doing this? Well, it wants to destroy us, that’s all,” the 33-year-old lawyer said, with rubble in the street behind her. “It wants to destroy the boys at the front, and us in the rear.”

Moscow said it had fired on military targets and that the “objectives of the strike have been achieved”.

As rescuers worked through the rubble of Soviet-era blocks of flats, residents—mostly elderly people and many families with children—sat on benches outside, some holding their belongings. One woman, blood and bruises on her face, clutched her small dog as she told a rescuer someone was under the rubble. Another body lay on the grass outside, covered by a white sheet.

Nearby, a psychologist tended to a woman in a white T-shirt who held both hands over her mouth crying. Zelensky cut short a visit to South Africa on Thursday and said more than 80 people had been wounded in the attack.

Officials warned the death toll may rise, with more people believed to be trapped under the rubble.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 31 people were hospitalized, including five children. He declared a day of mourning in the city for Friday. Emergency services released footage of rescuers searching for people through the rubble in high-rise apartment blocks in the dark, winding with stretchers through tight, destroyed staircases.

Meanwhile, France’s President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin needed to “stop lying” over wanting peace in Ukraine while continuing to strike the country. “The only thing to do is for President Putin to finally stop lying,” Macron said during a visit to Madagascar. He accused the Russian leader of telling US negotiators “he wants peace” but then continuing “to bombard Ukraine”. A Russian missile attack on Kyiv earlier Thursday killed at least nine people, one of the deadliest strikes on the Ukrainian capital since Moscow launched its invasion more than three years ago. — AFP