Sixty killed in Russian airstrike on Ukraine school

Sixty people have been killed after a village school in eastern Ukraine took a direct hit in a Russian air raid, with rescue attempts said by the regional governor to be impossible due to constant shelling.

About 90 people had been using the school in Bilohorivka, a village 60 miles (97km) north-west of the Russian-controlled city of Luhansk, as a shelter after the previous place of refuge, a clubhouse, had been destroyed in an earlier attack.

Serhiy Gaidai, the Luhansk governor, told the Guardian he believed the 30 people who escaped had been outside in the grounds of the building. He said he had little hope for those who were under rubble.

Gaidai said the attack on the school in Bilohorivka had taken place at 6pm on Saturday night and had been followed by a constant barrage in the surrounding area that had made rescue attempts impossible.

He said a bus had been sent to the village, which has a population of 800 to 900 people, to evacuate the remaining residents on Sunday morning but it had to turn round due to the ferocity of the shelling on the roads.

Gaidai said he had been frustrated in recent weeks that the residents had repeatedly refused to leave despite the growing dangers to their lives as Russia has focused its attacks in the east and south of Ukraine.

Earlier on Saturday, eight miles (13km) north of the school, two children died and a further two children and an elderly woman were injured when a missile hit the village of Pryvole, Gaidai said.