MOSCOW, February 15. /TASS/. The first floor of a shopping center received the greatest damage in a strike on Belgorod by the Ukrainian armed forces.
People on the second floor of the shopping center were unharmed and have been safely evacuated from the building, an eyewitness from a nearby sewing school told TASS.
"Currently, we are at home; everyone has been evacuated. My school is on the second floor; at first we didn’t realize what was happening, there were explosions, we are used to them, as strange as it sounds. We stepped away from the windows, then somebody went downstairs. So, it turns out that everything that happened (the most serious damage - TASS) was downstairs, those people who were outside, in [a grocery store] on the first floor, were seriously injured. On the second floor, we did not realize anything and were unharmed. Now everything is cordoned off; we were evacuated, nobody is being let [into the shopping center]," the eyewitness said.
In turn, a security guard at a nearby kindergarten told TASS that parents were taking their children home. A local school and a nearby vocational college noted that their students were attending classes remotely and were not inside during the shelling attack.
Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that five people, including a child, were killed and 18 were wounded in the Ukrainian attack on the city. In Belgorod, various damage has been reported to seven private residences, with windows shattered and roofs and fences damaged. Some windows were shattered in five apartment buildings and about five vehicles were damaged by flying shrapnel. Also, one store and the premises of an industrial enterprise sustained some damage.