Sawt Falasteen - 'Horrible and cruel': Kyiv residents shocked after heavy Russian strikes

The explosions smashed and shook buildings, burst water mains, left craters and torched automobiles -- jarring Kyiv's nearly three million people, including jolting some out of their sleep, as the city began its work week.

"I'm very shocked," said 22-year-old Ivan Poliakov sitting on a park bench where he was so angry he struggled for his words.

"I arrived in Kyiv this morning. I was walking in the street... when there were the explosions," he told AFP.

"I saw children and women cry. I love Kyiv. The people are good, they are courageous. But in an instant... it's death."

In the wooded Taras Shevchenko park in central Kyiv a missile gouged out a huge crater next to a child's playground after renting asunder the air above it.

A small trail of white smoke was still rising. Branches were shorn clean off trees.

Shortly after 8:00 am Monday (0500 GMT), two missiles hit this upscale neighbourhood, less than a minute and 300 metres apart.

In the streets by the park, apartment block windows have been blown out and glass shards litter the ground.

The blasts were so powerful that they ripped the door of a bar restaurant, before employees began sweeping up the debris.

At one end of the park, the first blast hit a crossroads, close to a white, three-story administrative building -- all of whose windows had been broken.

A missile dug a crater in the road, raising up the asphalt. Several cars parked there were now only twisted and blackened wrecks.

An AFP journalist saw a body entirely covered with a blanket.

- 'They're killing civilians' -

A water pipe was hit, leaving a stream of water that flowed into the road leading to the city's main artery.

Ksenia Ryazantseva and her husband live in a street next to the park, but their apartment faces a courtyard, opposite the children's play area.

"We were sleeping and we heard the first explosion" by the crossroads," Ksenia told AFP.

"We woke up and went to check, then the second explosion occurred (in the park). We don't know what happened," added the 39-year-old language teacher.

"We saw the smoke, then the cars and then we realised we had no more windows. Fortunately we live facing the courtyard," she said.

"There's a university, two museums. There are no military targets or things like that. They are killing civilians," she said angrily.

Asked about her thoughts following the first attack on the capital since 26 June, she replied: "Well, we're at war."

For Serguii Agapov, there is no doubt the attacks are in reprisal for the explosion on the Russian bridge to Crimea.

- 'Why?' -

"After the Crimea bridge, everything started. Yesterday Zaporizhzhia, today Kyiv. Yes, I think that these are very horrible and cruel reprisals because civilians are suffering," he said.

They are feeling, he added, both "fear and the desire that this be over soon. We don't understand why they are doing this to us, what is the aim of all this?"

Around the two impacts of the missile strikes, men wearing clothes stamped "Expert" took samples from the craters.

A red and white ribbon was strung around the area, which was guarded by armed police officers.

In Kyiv, the national police service said that at least five people had been killed and another dozen were wounded in the capital, which was among several cities hit Monday.

Half a dozen blasts were heard, with strikes on several neighbourhoods including the city centre.

Many shops remained closed.

It was a sharp contrast with Sunday, when large crowds went through the area on a sunny afternoon.

W.Mansour--SF-PST