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Funeral held for family ‘wiped off the map’ in Russian strike

▶ Watch Video: Russia slams Ukraine with deadly strikes as Poland alleges Moscow breached NATO airspace

The funeral of five members of the same family who were killed in a Russian airstrike last week was held in central Ukraine on Monday, as Moscow again pounded the region.

According to the Ukrainian authorities, a direct hit by an Iskander ballistic missile struck the family’s house in Kryvyi Rih — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city — on July 30.

At least two adults and four children were killed but the death toll could be higher as all the remains have not yet been formally identified.

On Monday, the coffins of five of the dead were brought to a small church in the town in front of a crowd of several dozen people, an AFP journalist said.

The family was “exceptionally good and sincere,” said Oksana Stretovych, a colleague of one of the deceased, Olena Voronova. “They always responded to all kinds of situations and tried to help.”

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This photo shows a makeshift memorial honoring a family whose members were killed in a missile strike on July 30, 2026, in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rig on August 3, 2026, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Serhii Okunev /AFP via Getty Images

Stretovych herself heard “a powerful explosion” on the night of the tragedy.

She was unable to sleep because she was worried about her husband and their only son, who serves in the Ukrainian army in “difficult” areas, she explained.

“When I got up and looked around me, not seeing any flames, I still started to try to find out what happened,” Stretovych added. “That’s how I found out about the incident. It’s very hard.”

“Even bigger desire for vengeance”

Stretovych’s son, military officer Taras, also said they were “a wonderful family, a large family, a family of faith, who simply worked for the good of Ukraine.”

Russian forces “simply wiped off the map a great family that we mourn deeply,” he said, adding that he had “an even bigger desire for vengeance.”

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Mourners stand beside the coffins of family members who were killed in a missile strike on July 30, 2026, during a funeral ceremony in Kryvyi Rig on August 3, 2026.

Serhii Okunev /AFP via Getty Images

The priest also described the family as respectable and hardworking.

On the evening of the strike, he said, “at my place, too, in the garage, the window was blown out, and the one in the bedroom as well,” he said.

After the missile struck, the Voronov home “was gone; all that was left was flattened earth,” he added.

More than four years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, shelling continues on an almost daily basis and is intensifying on both sides of the frontline, causing a growing number of civilian deaths.

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A woman mourns beside the coffins of family members who were killed in a missile strike on July 30, 2026, during a funeral ceremony in Kryvyi Rig on August 3, 2026.

Serhii Okunev /AFP via Getty Images

On Monday, a new Russian attack near Kryvyi Rih killed three, including an 8-year-old child, at a service station, according to the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, Oleksandr Ganzha.

In July, the U.N. expressed concern about an “alarming escalatory trend” of increased civilian casualties in Ukraine “driven by the intensifying use of powerful weapons that are particularly deadly when used in densely populated urban areas.”

3 children among 7 killed in strike on beach, Russia says

In Russia and annexed Crimea, Ukrainian strikes killed 11 on Monday, Russian officials said. Seven people, including three children, were killed and dozens wounded when a drone crashed on a Russian beach on the Black Sea coast, the local governor said.

“What happened today was a deliberate attack by the Kyiv regime on the civilian population, which has no connection whatsoever to military infrastructure,” the governor, Veniamin Kondratyev, said in a statement on Telegram.

Ukraine has escalated its retaliatory strikes on Russia in recent months, partly to pressure Moscow to the negotiating table after nearly four-and-a-half years of war. Ukraine has targeted energy and logistics infrastructure. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged in June that Ukrainian strikes were causing “problems” for Russia, saying they were “observing a certain shortage, but it’s not critical.”

Last week, Zelenskyy met in Washington with President Trump and representatives of American defense companies, as he pleaded for swifter and bigger deliveries of Patriot air defense systems that are the best way to stop Russia’s ballistic assaults.

The Iran war has drained stockpiles of the American-made interceptors. Mr. Trump has promised to grant Ukraine licenses to build its own Patriots, but production could take a long time to set up.

After a whisper saved baby and father from rubble, the search is on for mother in collapsed building in Colombia

By CNN
(CNN) — Emergency teams are racing to find the mother of a baby who was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building following the deadly 7.4 magnitude earthquake that struck Colombia on Monday.Three-month-old Salomón was pulled alive from the five-story residential building in Cali after a bystander heard his father’s faint voice rising from the debris: “I’m here. I’m with a baby.”Video of the remarkable rescue shows the infant in a dust-covered bodysuit being carefully pulled out of the wreckage. His father, Juan David Gómez, can be seen lying awkwardly on his side with his arm bloodied, still half-trapped beneath a concrete plank.Now, as Salomón and his father recover in hospital, a desperate search is on for the baby’s mother, Valentina Vanegas Galiano, a 29-year-old architect, who remains trapped under the rubble of the same building, the Torres del Limonar, alongside her younger brother.Valentina’s friends and colleagues — including architects, engineers and construction workers — have joined emergency crews and firefighters in the search.“We do not have an exact confirmed location for Valentina, nor any indication that there is life,” her friend Alejandra Montoya told CNN Wednesday.As the critical 72-hour window for rescuing survivors closes, Valentina’s friends are urgently calling for the help of specialist teams, such as the Topos Tlatelolco Rescue Brigade, a Mexican group with extensive experience responding to natural disasters.But Colombia has only just begun receiving international aid and rescuers after initially refusing some offers in the crucial hours following the devastating earthquake, the strongest to hit the country in more than a decade. The delay is considered the first controversy of the country’s new government, led by conservative President Abelardo de la Espriella, who took office only last Friday.The quake struck western Colombia at 7:34 a.m. on Monday, killing at least 265 people and destroying thousands of homes, according to De la Espriella, who said almost 500 people remain missing.Outside the Torres del Limonar, Montoya said she has barely left the site since Monday.She said the baby’s father was able to provide a reference point for where he believes Valentina became trapped, and rescue teams are working with that information and technical analysis of the structure, prioritizing areas where other signs of life have been heard.“Juan David says she was about 3 or 4 meters ahead of him, meaning a little closer to the entrance, so she ended up inside the structure, and it has been very difficult to find her,” Montoya said.Videos Montoya shared with CNN show dozens of volunteers and rescuers working through the rubble. More than 20 people were rescued alive from the complex during the first 12 hours after the earthquake, according to Reuters. Since then, three more people and a dog have also been found alive.An extraordinary rescueBaby Salomón and his father Juan David are stable and under observation. The baby suffered a few scrapes and a minor blow to the head, while his father is recovering after undergoing surgery, Montoya said.They were found under the rubble after bystander Brian Osorio Zuluaga heard Juan David’s call for help.When the deadly quake struck, Osorio ran out of his office in Cali and rushed home on his motorbike. But the sight of the collapsed five-story residential building forced him to stop.“It was a large complex, covering an entire block,” Osorio told CNN.Residents and neighbors of the building had fled into the street, “some in sleepwear or pajamas; some crying, others in shock,” Osorio said.He approached the rubble and began shouting into the wreckage for survivors, despite warnings about a possible gas leak.He suddenly asked those around him for silence, and heard a faint voice rise out of the debris — barely a whisper.Osorio described how he and several others began moving debris with their hands to reach the pair, carefully holding a large concrete slab aloft as other volunteers cleared a path to the baby.“You can see the baby’s little head there — which, at the time, looked sort of purplish because he couldn’t breathe,” Osorio said. “Once we started removing the rubble, the baby began to… breathe, and his color started to come back.”Osorio said he was handed the baby, and gave him to a police officer, who took him to an ambulance. They then turned their attention to freeing the father.In the rubble, Osorio said he saw clothes, shoes, and a stuffed animal covered in dust. He thought about the people who might still be trapped.The bravery of everyone who rushed to help was what saved the lives of both man and baby.“Unity is strength, because no one person alone could have lifted that piece of rubble; it was so large and so heavy,” he said.“It’s better to act than to stand still,” Osorio added. “Every bit helps.”Rescue efforts enter fourth dayThe quake struck at the heart of the country’s coffee-growing region and catapulted communities into a state of national disaster as world leaders offered aid and assistance.In Cali, a woman was pulled from under a mountain of rubble on Tuesday to cheers as firemen carried her out on a stretcher following a complex, multinational rescue operation.And in Pereira, a CNN team on the ground saw rescue workers and volunteers form a human chain to remove debris and help save those trapped from an apartment building.“There’s folks who have jumped in and you can see they’re wearing everything from athleisure wear to shorts, tennis shoes — they’re not prepared for this,” CNN’s senior national correspondent David Culver said from the site. “We have seen scenes like this scattered throughout Pereira. This is one of the hardest-hit areas.”But in the epicenter of Monday’s earthquake, Chocó, an indigenous leader told CNN that help has yet to reach the area, Colombia’s poorest region.Victor Chamapuro, leader of the Wounaan Indigenous Reserve “Buenavista” in Chocó’s Litoral del San Juan, said “all our houses are on the ground.”“Where are we going to sleep now? We have to be alert now, we’re sleeping outside,” he said.Chamapuro called on authorities to send food and medicine, but the “Buenavista” reserve can only be reached by boat on a five-hour journey from the port of Buenaventura, on Colombia’s Pacific coast.Video sent by Chamapuro from the reserve shows flattened buildings that appear to be built from timber and corrugated iron sheets. Others are still standing but with varying levels of damage.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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