A family of six, including a two-month-old girl and a five-year-old boy, struck a mine in Kharkiv Oblast while returning home from their dacha, reports Serhiy Bolvinov, head of the investigative department of the National Police in Kharkiv Oblast.
“A man was driving his sister with her two adult children and two small grandchildren in a Zhiguli. The driver decided to take a shortcut from the garden society to the city and turned into the forest near the ring road,” Bolvinov wrote.
The incident occurred near the village of Tsyrkuny by a cemetery. The vehicle hit what is preliminarily identified as a Russian TM-62P anti-tank mine and caught fire.
“The explosion was so powerful that people were thrown from the car in different directions. The body of the older boy was badly burned, and his uncle had to be collected in fragments.”
The two-month-old girl’s body was found the day after the tragedy, having been thrown fifteen meters from her mother by the blast wave.
Search operations began on 7 July, with explosives technicians leading the way to check the area.
As of January 2023, about 30% of Ukraine’s territory was contaminated with explosive objects due to Russian aggression, requiring decades and specialized equipment for demining.
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