On the afternoon of April 17th 2022, Russia allegedly fired artillery in the city center of Kharkiv, killing at least five civilians and injuring at least 10 civilians, including a woman.

Despite the preliminary estimates, most reports set the number of civilian deaths at 5 and of injured at 13, while others reported up to 6 dead and 24 injured.

A female volunteer was quoted by XC_Kharkiv on Telegram after sustaining an eye injury from the shelling: “A small fragment in the eye, which the military washed out on the spot and made sure that I could move. I can see well. The ringing in the ears has almost stopped, but no communication until tomorrow. I will run tomorrow.”

A Telegram post by Truexa News UA reported that an elderly woman who was feeding the cats in the park was killed, along with a video showing their body.

A tweet from @_hello_dears_ identified cluster bombs as being used in the shelling, adding that shells hit an “institute” where people were hiding and killed one of the employees.

The shelling seemingly occurred around 1.25 p.m. local time in the districts of Kyiv and Shevchenkiv. Twitter user @_A_Vit_ commented: “The Russian army is purposefully shelling residential areas in order to destroy the Ukrainian people”. As a result of the shelling, “A number of residential buildings, institutes and infrastructure objects of the city were damaged”, Prokuratura_kharkiv reported on Telegram.

There are no other details at this time.

This incident has reference to ACLED code UKR55983.