In Poltava, in central Ukraine, two Russian missiles targeting a military institute cause several dozen victims.

Two missiles hit the Poltava Military Institute of Telecommunications in central Ukraine and the hospital next to it on Tuesday, September 3 at around 9:10 a.m. (8:10 a.m. in Paris). Several hundred people were reportedly on the university site, a base hidden from view by trees and surrounded on all four sides by buildings and houses. It was completely inaccessible on Tuesday early evening.

The human toll was at least 51 dead on Tuesday evening and more than two hundred injured, but it could “unfortunately grow significantly”according to Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. It could be the deadliest bombing in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022.

Poltava, the regional capital of almost 300,000 inhabitants, welcomes every
year of many students, including those attending the Military Institute at the start of the academic year. “Our classes started at 8:20 in the large teaching building.”says Nikita, 26, a developer from Odessa who was recruited against his will on June 11, following the new mobilization law and who had been following a month-long training course at this telecommunications school for exactly one week, on August 27, with colleagues of all ages. “An alert went off in the school and on our phones, he continues. Less
Two minutes later, a first missile hit the building. It was 9:10. Then, a second or two later, a second missile crashed.”says the newly mobilized soldier, who is an intern in one of the school’s three barracks.

“Complete and rapid investigation”

Both strikes surprised the students who were just starting
to go to shelter, according to him, in a building other than the main one. « Ce
are the people who were outside and on the stairs of the
lower floors who were killed, explains the young soldierbecause the missile
hit at level 3^e floor. “ He himself was already in the
crowd gathered on the ground floor. Only the right leg of the young man at
The brown-bearded, blue-eyed man was hit: he was pockmarked by the shards of glass from the front door that exploded.

“I have ordered a full and prompt investigation into the circumstances of what happened.” in Poltava, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video posted on his Telegram channel on Tuesday. Ukrainian military bloggers claimed on social media that the missiles targeted an official outdoor military ceremony. “No military gathering had taken place in the courtyard”however, assures our soldier, integrated this summer into the 3^e tank brigade of the Ukrainian army.

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