Mother and Child's Desperate Run for Cover in Kyiv Ends Outside Locked Shelter

Marc Santora and Anatoly Kurmanaev / The New York Times

Emergency workers and the mother of a woman killed in an overnight missile strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, stand near the body on Thursday. (photo: Nicole Tung/NYT)

Mother and Child's Desperate Run for Cover in Kyiv Ends Outside Locked Shelter

Marc Santora and Anatoly Kurmanaev / The New York Times

02 june 23

Listening to the wail of air-raid sirens, a mother and her 9-year-old daughter raced through the Ukrainian capital’s early morning darkness on Thursday to a clinic, where a bomb shelter promised escape from another Russian missile barrage.

But the clinic was locked, the authorities said. After explosions roared, the woman and her daughter were found dead among green trees and broken glass, just outside the door. So was another woman.

“People were knocking, knocking for a very long time,” the husband of the third victim, who gave his name as Yaroslav, told Ukraine’s public broadcaster. “There were women and children and nobody opened it.”