Russia shells a Kharkiv care home for 330 adults and children with disabilities
Advertisement
Bethany Dawson
Mar 12, 2022, 21:18 IST
A burnt-out car is seen on the street after a missile launched by Russian invaders hit near the Kharkiv Regional State Administration building in Svobody (Freedom) Square) at approximately 8 am local time on Tuesday, March 1, Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, on March 1, 2022, in Kharkiv, Ukraine.Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Russian forces bombed a neurological care home in Kharkiv, North Eastern Ukraine, on Friday.
The Kharkiv Regional Head said bombing the home of 330 residents, and 30 staff was "a war crime."
Advertisement
Russian forces bombed a care home for people with disabilities in Kharkiv, North Eastern Ukraine, on Friday.
The Telegraph reports that many staff and patients hid in the bomb shelter. However, they noted that the direct hit on the five-story building did not kill anyone.
Advertisement
Several organizations have called for additional support for disabled residents of Ukraine, who are often unable to flee the country — or even get into bomb shelters — due to inaccessibility.
The International Disability Alliance called for emergency response, saying that disabled people "already cut off from their communities, risk being abandoned and forgotten."
They added that "evacuation plans are often not designed in accessible ways. Persons with disabilities cannot reach metro stations and bunkers. In many cases, shelters are inaccessible for persons who use wheelchairs to enter and navigate.
"The level of stigma and ignorance against persons with intellectual disabilities and persons with psychosocial disabilities increases during conflict, putting them at higher risk of being left behind in evacuations and experiencing violence and abuse."
Advertisement
In Bucha, a city outside Kyiv, a woman told Insider that her grandmother had been abandoned in a care home after patients who could walk were evacuated.
Xenija told Insider that her 72-year-old grandmother, who has Parkinson's disease, was abandoned with roughly 35 other residents in the nursing home. They were "left to die," she said.
"I don't know what we can do not to let them die. No one would even bury them. That kind of death is most terrifying," she said.
She said a relative of a resident in the home organized an evacuation bus, but it is not clear how many people were rescued.
"I'm in shock that a private person was in charge of this [evacuation], not the owner of the home," Xenija told Insider.
Advertisement
{{}}
NewsletterSIMPLY PUT - where we join the dots to inform and inspire you. Sign up for a weekly brief collating many news items into one untangled thought delivered straight to your mailbox.
A TV journalist was live reporting on a deadly collision when he was suddenly interrupted by another car crash, video shows
Russia is stockpiling corpses of Ukrainian soldiers to use in a 'false flag' attack on Chernobyl, Ukraine officials allege
Russian oligarch criticizes Putin's plans to seize assets of foreign companies, saying it will take the country back to the turbulent days of the Russian Revolution