Ukrainian soldiers who witnessed the Russian missile strike on a military academy and hospital in Ukraine on Tuesday were left traumatized by the devastating attack that killed dozens of people.
The attack in the central city of Poltava killed at least 51 people and wounded more than 200 others in one of the deadliest strikes since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 30 months ago.
Rescue crew and medics saved at least 25 people, including 11 who were dug out from the rubble, officials said.
But over a dozen more are believed to still be trapped under the building debris.
A 26-year-old cadet who just began training at the Poltava Military Communications Institute two weeks earlier told the BBC that what he witnessed was horrific.
“Too much blood, too many dead bodies,” Mykyta Petrov told the station.
Air raid alarms in Poltava went off just two minutes before the explosions went off, giving the soldiers-in-training and locals little time to run and hide in bomb shelters, Ukrainian officials and residents said.
What resulted was an unimaginable scene that shocked even those accustomed to seeing the results of the ongoing war.
Rescue crews were pulling fatal victims from the partially destroyed military academy building “without legs, others without arms, some even without heads,” Denys Kliap told the New York Times.
Kliap, 26, is the director of Free and Unbreakable, a volunteer rapid response team in Ukraine, and has responded to the scenes of many Russian attacks.
But Tuesday’s deadly missile strikes stuck out from the other mass casualty events.
“When we arrived, the only thing I remember was the pile of bodies scattered all over the territory of the institute,” he told the newspaper.
“It was very terrifying,” he added. “We’ve never seen anything like this in Poltava before.”
Kliap said he believed many of the victims were struck as they tried to race toward the shelter based on the scene.
Several residents and officials’ accounts backed up his theory.
Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko said the two minutes between the warning sirens and the missiles exploding on the ground was “nothing.”
“You just imagine you’re on the sixth floor of some building and you need to run away downstairs. Is it realistic that you can do this in two minutes?” he told the BBC. “Just imagine this life and like this several times per day. We can’t continue like this. It’s just not fair.”
A 25-year-old soldier who was inside one of the military academy buildings during the attack had a similar account.
“Unfortunately, there was not enough time for all the people to run to the shelter,” the soldier named Markiyan told the Times. “There was too little time between the air raid alert and the first strike.”
Markiyan, who asked that his last name not be published, suffered minor shrapnel injuries on his hands and face and seemed to be in a state of shock, according to the paper.
“After the first strike, I was blown under the stairwell by the shock wave,” he said. “When I was trying to recover and continue to take cover, the second strike occurred.”
He said several of his friends were still trapped under the rubble.
A local resident whose husband is fighting on the front line in the Donbas region described the heart-breaking reality to the BBC.
“Soldiers have died here and I know there are still soldiers still under the rubble. Their wives are waiting for them,” Jana Kulishova, 30, said.
Ukrainian officials confirmed that military personnel had been killed in the Russian attack as they vowed to seek justice.
“The Russian scum will definitely be held accountable for this strike,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video posted to his Telegram channel.
