Anadolu crew injured by the air strike on Kharkiv

Journalist Davit Kachkachishvili and photographer Özge Elif Kızıl of the Turkish news agency Anadolu were injured by the Russian shelling strike of the Park Hotel in Kharkiv on January 10, reports the news agency.

According to the media outlet, the upper floors of the hotel were completely destroyed. The journalist and the photographer were taken to a hospital for examination by an ambulance. Kachkachishvili has minor cuts on his hands.

The crew's car was destroyed, as were most of the cars parked nearby.

Ukrayna'daki AA savaş muhabirlerinin Harkiv kentinde kaldığı otel bombalanırken haber ekibi, tahrip olan binadan yara almadan kurtulduhttps://t.co/2ASUQDVvJU pic.twitter.com/cWYC7nDovQ

— Anadolu Ajansı (@anadoluajansi) January 10, 2024

The head of the Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration, Oleh Synehubov, said that the Russians fired two S-300 missiles at the hotel around 10:30 p.m.

Photo by Anadolu

According to the Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor's Office, 13 people were injured by the shelling, including the two Anadolu employees, who are citizens of Turkiye and Georgia.

As of now, 10 people have been hospitalised, and three received medical assistance on the spot. The missiles are said to have been fired from the Belgorod region of Russia.

The police have opened a pre-trial investigation into violation of the laws and customs of war (Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov stressed that the strike was targeting civilian infrastructure, not a military facility.

"Soldiers have never stayed in this hotel, almost all of Kharkiv knows that. This hotel was used by journalists. It was a well-known fact. At the time of the attack, foreign journalists, namely from Turkiye, were staying in the hotel. This leads me to believe that the Russian Federation was targeting the mass media specifically," he said in a comment to journalists.

Volodymyr Tymoshko, the head of the Main Office of the National Police in the Kharkiv oblast, said that Russia had shelled the hotel in Kharkiv deliberately and that all the victims were civilians.

"They are all civilians, including foreign journalists, they work in Kharkiv oblast, Donetsk oblast, reporting the truth about the crimes committed by the ruscists on Ukrainian soil. Russia hit the hotel deliberately – a 4-meter-deep crater was discovered on the spot, and a Russian rocket destroyed another building nearby," Tymoshko said.

As the IMI reported, a Ukrainian interpreter for the German TV channel ZDF was injured in the Russian shelling strike on Kharkiv on December 30, 2023. At the time of the explosion, the channel's team was in the Kharkiv Palace Hotel, which was hit by a Russian missile.

On December 30 the Russians shelled Kharkiv city with rockets. The attack resulted in a British citizen working as a security advisor for a team of German journalists being injured.

The police opened a case for violation of the laws and customs of war (Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

The rocket strike on downtown Kharkiv also severely damaged the Radio House, where the offices of "Suspilne. Kharkiv" and Ukrainian Radio are located, and the office of the media group "Objektiv", where the TRC "Simon" is based.

IMI monitors Russia's crimes against the media and journalists in Ukraine. In the year and ten months since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has committed 548 crimes against journalists and media in Ukraine.