Body of Mother Found Still Holding 4-Month-Old Son in Odesa

Odesa mourned Sunday (March 2) as emergency workers uncovered more bodies following a Russian-launched overnight attack Saturday where Iranian-made Shahed drones hit a high-rise building destroying 18 apartments and damaging another seven.

 “The number of victims of the Russian drone attack has increased to nine. The body of a dead woman is currently being unblocked,” Head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration Oleh Kiper posted on Telegram at 9:18 a.m. on Sunday.

Then at 9:39 a.m., the next post by Kiper showed that the number had increased to ten: “Next to the woman's body, the body of another dead baby has just been found…Rescuers continue to dismantle the debris.”

Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine.

The night before, Kiper said that rescue workers had identified the bodies of three men aged 35, 40 and 54, and two women aged 73 and 31, as well as two children – a three-year-old and a 4-month-old.

Photos of the victims began appearing on social networks not long after the drone attacks, which have become a regular part of life in Ukrainian cities since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. 

Mykola Kuleba, the founder and head of the “Save Ukraine” charitable organization, posted a photo of Anna Haydarzhi, the daughter of Odesa Peresypsk Church pastor Mykola Sydak, who was killed along with her son, 4-month-old Timofey. 

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Kuleba wrote that Timofey had been found in his mother's arms.

“Being in another room, Anna’s husband, Serhiy, and daughter miraculously survived,” Religious Information Service of Ukraine reported.

Photo: Anna Haydarzhi with husband Serhiy, along with son and daughter. SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/sergey.rakhuba

“Such attacks by Shahed drones have no military sense and cannot have any. This is terrorism aimed solely at destroying lives, solely at intimidating people,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Facebook.

“The world knows what can be opposed to terrorism. The world has enough missile defense systems, systems to protect against Shahed drones and missiles. And delaying the supply of weapons to Ukraine, missile defense systems to protect our people leads, unfortunately, to such losses, to the fact that the list of children whose lives Russia takes away constantly grows,” he wrote.

On the same day as the drone attack on Odesa, a Russian drone struck in the northeast Kharkiv region, in the village of Velykyi Burluk, sparking a fire and killing a 76-year-old man.