Kharkiv( Ukraine): More than 11 people have been killed including a medical student from Karnataka by Russian rocket attacks on Kharkiv, the second-largest city of Ukraine, situated in the eastern part of the country.

Kharkiv is very close to the Russian border. Due to the continuous shelling of Russian forces, Kharkiv city has shattered, residential areas have been damaged due to heavy shelling.

Ministry of Interior Affairs adviser Anton Herashchenko’s said dozens of people were killed in the attacks on the city in Ukraine’s northeast, near the separatist-held regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, more than 400km (250 miles) from Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Russian artillery attacks on Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv amounted to state terrorism and called on the international community to recognise 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, Reuters reports. 

“Kharkiv has just been massively fired upon by rockets. Dozens of dead and hundreds of wounded,” stated in his Facebook post.

Disturbed report coming from Kharkiv that Russian troops have launched attacks on densely populated civilian areas in the city.

“There are lots of showing explosions and suggestions that rocket fire has been used, others that bombs have been dropped by the air, and there are lots of flashes that indicate secondary explosions, and the use of cluster munitions in amongst all of that,” said Hull, Al Jazeera reported.

Russian troops advanced from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson towards the city of Mykolaiv.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian state communications service said in a post on Telegram that a missile had hit a residential building in the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv near the border with Belarus.

Ukraine’s state energy company Energoatom dismissed claims by Russia that its troops had taken control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as fake news.

“Currently, all four nuclear power plants are under the control of Ukraine and are operating normally.”

Details of the military developments could not be independently verified. The deaths in Kharkiv came a day after the Ukrainian troops repelled a significant Russian attack on the city. 

Videos posted on Ukrainian media and social networks showed Russian vehicles moving across the city of about 1.4 million people and a light vehicle burning on the street.

Later on Sunday, the regional governor, Oleh Sinegubov, wrote on Facebook that the Ukrainian forces regained full control over the country’s second-largest city.

“Control over Kharkiv is completely ours! The armed forces, the police, and the defence forces are working, and the city is being completely cleansed of the enemy,” he said.

Russia's bombardment of civilian targets in Ukraine's second city of Kharkiv broke international rules of conflict, the EU's foreign policy chief said Tuesday. "The shelling against civilian infrastructure yesterday in Kharkiv violates the laws of war. The EU stands unwavering at the side of Ukraine in these dramatic moments," Josep Borrell said after a call with Ukraine's foreign minister, AFP reported. 

A Russian vehicle is burning in Kharkiv, Russian armoured personnel carrier burns amid damaged and abandoned light utility vehicles in Kharkiv

Ukraine’s interior ministry reported 352 civilian deaths, including 14 children, as of Sunday night. More than 500,000 people have fled the country since the invasion, another UN official said on Monday