Rescuers dig through wreckage after 16 killed in Russian strike on Ukraine mall
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Rescuers dig through wreckage after 16 killed in Russian strike on Ukraine mall
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Figure caption: Watch: Video shows Russian drone strike Ukraine shopping mall on Friday
By Jaroslav Lukiv and Claire Keenan
Published 21 August 2026
Updated 13 minutes ago
Rescuers in Ukraine worked through the night to search for survivors in the wreckage of a shopping centre hit by a deadly Russian double-tap drone strike.
Sixteen people were killed and 130 injured in the busy mall in Kryvyi Rih on Friday, local officials said. Nine people are reportedly still missing, including two children.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the "cynical and despicable" attack was carried out in two waves, with the second strike targeting emergency workers at the scene.
Both sides meanwhile continued to trade strikes overnight, with Ukrainian attacks said to have killed at least four people in Russia, including two children, and two people reported dead by Kyiv.
The death toll from Friday’s attack reached 16 after another body was retrieved from the rubble overnight, said regional military head Oleksandr Hanzha.
Twenty-three children were among those injured in the shopping centre in the Dnipropetrovsk region, he added, 14 of whom were still in hospital as of Saturday morning.
"Twenty-three [people] are in serious and extremely serious conditions, including three children – two boys aged 10 and 16 and an 11-year-old girl," said Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s defence council. "All have undergone surgery, doctors are providing them with all the necessary assistance."
Dramatic footage verified by the BBC showed the second drone hitting the already burning mall in Zelensky’s hometown. Russia’s military has not commented.
Vilkul said the drones had been flying at "extremely low altitudes", describing the attackers as "animals."
Rescue teams from seven other Ukrainian regions were urgently deployed to help search for survivors.
As rescue efforts continued early on Saturday, Zelensky said there had been "missile and drone strikes throughout the evening and night" across Ukraine, with residential buildings and civilian infrastructure damaged.
He said one person was killed and another injured after ballistic missile strikes damaged railway infrastructure in the capital Kyiv, while three people were injured by a "brutal" drone strike on a city minibus in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.
Regional officials earlier said at least one person had been killed by a Russian drone strike.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said it downed a total of 457 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Two children were killed and two adults injured in a strike on a port town in Russia’s Krasnodar region, according to Governor Veniamin Kondratyev. Local officials in Belgorod said a strike had killed two and injured 13.
Ukraine’s military said it had struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region overnight, causing a fire to break out. Russian online retailer Ozon said one of its warehouses in the region had also been hit.
