Four killed, 35 children injured in Ukrainian drone attack on Luhansk, Russian officials say


A destroyed dormitory building of the Starobilsk College of Luhansk Pedagogical University following an overnight attack, what Russian-installed authorities called a Ukrainian drone strike, in the course of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the town of Starobilsk (Starobelsk) in the Luhansk region, a Russian-controlled area of Ukraine, May 22, 2026. Leonid Pasechnik, head of the Russian-controlled parts of the Luhansk Region/Handout via REUTERS

MOSCOW, May 22 (Reuters) - ⁠At least four people were killed and 35 ⁠children were wounded in an overnight Ukrainian ‌drone attack on a student dormitory in Russian-controlled Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, Russian officials said on Friday.

Reuters was not able to ​immediately verify what happened independently ⁠and there was no ⁠immediate comment from Ukraine, which is fighting to try ⁠to ‌return Luhansk, one of four regions Russia unilaterally claimed as its own in 2022 ⁠in what Kyiv said was an illegal ​land grab.

Yana ‌Lantratova, the Russia's Human Rights Commissioner, said that ⁠86 teenagers ​aged between 14 to 18 had been sleeping inside Luhansk Pedagogical University's Starobilsk college when Ukrainian drones attacked ⁠it.

"The Ukrainian armed forces carried out ​a targeted strike on sleeping children," Lantratova said in a statement.

Leonid Pasechnik, the top Russia-installed official in Luhansk, ⁠said two people had been pulled from the rubble and that rescue workers were still looking for children trapped beneath the debris.

Photo and video released ​by the Russian authorities showed ⁠rescue workers stretchering one man out of the rubble, ​severely damaged buildings, one of ‌which appeared to have partially ​collapsed, and fires still burning.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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