A Sputnik journalist and his wife were wounded in a Ukrainian Armed Forces drone strike near Belgorod, while their daughter was killed, said Dmitry Kiselyov, head of Rossiya Segodnya Russian state-media group, Sputnik's parent company.
“As a result of a Ukrainian drone strike, our employee, 29-year-old Akifi Khaibar, who works in the Afghan editorial office of Sputnik, and his Russian wife Olesya, sustained serious injuries and are currently in intensive care. A huge tragedy has occurred... the family lost a child - their 4-year-old daughter Amina was killed in the strike,” said Kiselyov.
“The Kiev regime embarked upon this terrorist attack on peaceful villages in Russia out of desperation, in response to what was happening on the battlefront. We are doing everything possible to help the family, support them, heal them,” said Kiselyov, adding that a decision was being taken as to whether it is necessary to transport the wounded to Moscow.
The general director of the Rossiya Segodnya media group lamented the fact that these losses among the media group’s journalist staff were not the first.
“We remember Andrei Stenin, who died in 2014, and Rostislav Zhuravlev, our military correspondent, who died this summer and was buried in Yekaterinburg," he said.
The condition of the wounded Sputnik journalist who is currently in the ICU is extremely grave and unstable, with doctors doing their outmost in an effort to save his life, said the Health Ministry of Belgorod region. As to Khaibar Akifi's wife, she is in ICU after undergoing surgery, with medics assessing her blood circulation signs as stable.
Olesya Akifi is an employee of the Belgorod State Technological University (BSTU named after V. G. Shukhov), candidate of philological sciences. According to a Sputnik source, the couple had been visiting their elderly relatives. It was added that the wounded woman does not yet know about the death of her daughter.
Earlier in the day, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov had said on Telegram that a child died when debris from a drone shot down by Russian air defenses collapsed on a house near the Russian city of Belgorod, causing a fire.
"Three people, including a small child, died," Gladkov said.
Ukraine has been attacking Russia's Belgorod region over the past months, targeting civilian infrastructure. Kiev resorts to aerial attacks by drones and missiles, while also sending sabotage groups. Russian Armed Forces have been successfully downing the UAVs, intercepting missiles and wiping out sabotage groups.