As Moscow's invasion of Ukraine enters its sixth day, a Kharkiv region head said on Tuesday that Russian missile attacks hit the center of Ukraine's second-largest city, including residential areas and the regional administration building.
Oleg Synegubov said Russia launched GRAD and cruise missiles on Kharkiv but that the city defense was holding.
"Such attacks are genocide of the Ukrainian people, a war crime against the civilian population!" Synegubov said in a video posted on social media on Tuesday morning.
He shared a video showing Kharkiv regional administration building being hit by a missile and exploding. The authenticity of the video was verified.
Interior Ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said at least 10 people were killed and 35 wounded in the strikes on the center of Kharkiv. "The rubble is being cleared and there will be even more victims and wounded," he said.
The administration building in Kharkiv bombed by Russian forces
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, said that Russian artillery attacks on Kharkiv amounted to state terrorism and called on the international community to recognize it as such.
"The terror aims to break us, to break our resistance," he said in a video address shared on social media describing Kyiv and Kharkiv as Russia's main targets.
Speaking at a disarmament conference in Geneva, Ukraine's foreign minister said that Russia had committed war crimes through its "indiscriminate shelling" of Kharkiv and called for a special meeting that would address Russian aggression and weapons of mass destruction.
"Nothing can justify missile shelling of residential buildings, kindergartens, orphanages, hospitals and emergency vehicles, passengers buses and millions of refugees fleeing Russian fire," said Dmytro Kuleba in a video address to the forum.
The country's ambassador told the same forum that Kyiv had requested a special meeting on the "global threat to global peace and security stemming from Russian aggression against Ukraine, including its WMD aspect".
According to the United Nations' human rights office, at least 136 civilians have been killed, including 13 children, and 400 have been injured since Russia invaded Ukraine last week.
"The real toll is likely to be much higher," said Liz Throssell, a spokesperson for rights office, adding that 253 of the casualties were in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbor's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.