Rescue workers pulled more bodies from the rubble on Saturday after a Russian missile attack on a residential neighbourhood in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk killed at least 11 people, as fighting raged farther southeast for control of the city of Bakhmut.

On Saturday, emergency workers retrieved two corpses from the remains of a five-story apartment building, a spokeswoman for the State Emergency Service, Veronika Bahal, told Ukrainian television. A two-year-old boy had been rescued from a building on Friday but then died in an ambulance, officials said.

Russia sent a barrage of missiles into a residential area of Sloviansk on Friday, according to Ukrainian officials. The head of the regional military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said that 21 others had been injured. He added that 34 apartment buildings were damaged in the barrage, along with an administrative building and shops.

On Saturday morning, Vadym Lyakh, a local official, told the Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne that five people were still believed to be trapped under the rubble.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine condemned the attack and noted that it had taken place on Good Friday, at the start of one of the Orthodox Church’s most important religious festivals.

“Another strike by terrorists,” Zelensky said in an overnight speech, adding: “This is an evil state,” he said in reference to Russia, “and it will lose.”

Many Ukrainians argue that such attacks show that the true face of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion, launched in February last year, has more to do with cruelty than with any specific strategic objective. Russia’s ministry of defence made no reference to the city of Sloviansk in a daily update on Saturday.

New York Times News Service