Kyiv: Russia has dropped three vacuum bombs in Ukraine's Okhtyrka, a senior Ukraine official said on Tuesday.
Emine Dzheppar, First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, tweeted that the bombs fell on Sumska region. "This bomb sucks in oxygen from surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion and is capable of vaporizing human bodies. Nobody will escape justice for using weapons prohibited by the Geneva convention."
Earlier, Ukrainian ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, said: "They used a vacuum bomb which is actually prohibited by the Geneva convention. The devastation that Russia is trying to inflict on Ukraine is large. "But Ukrainians will resist, we are defending our home, we do not have any other option. We will not get tired, we will not stop, we will not surrender."
According to The Independent, the bomb, also known as a thermobaric weapon or aerosol bomb, draws oxygen from the atmosphere to create a bigger and more devastating explosion.
More than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were killed after the Russian artillery hit a military base in Okhtyrka.
Earlier, Dmytro Zhyvytskyy, head of the region, had posted photographs on Telegram of the charred shell of a four-story building and rescuers searching through the rubble.
Several Russian soldiers and some local residents were also killed during the fighting on Sunday, he said in a Facebook post.
What is Vaccum Bomb?
Known as ‘Father Of All Bombs’, Vaccum Bomb is the most powerful non-nuclear weapons ever developed. Here are some of its lethal features.
Vaccum bomb is a thermobaric weapon which suck in the oxygen from the atmosphere after detonation and causes a massive explosion.
The Russians claim of test firing such a bomb in 2007 during its Syrian mission. It reportedly weighed around 6 ton and produced blast yield of whopping 44 TNT.
International experts say that the Vaccum bomb has destruction radius around 300 metres and when dropped from a jet, it can produce similar effect of that a small tactical nuclear weapon.