Russia Targets Zaporizhzhia Hotel in Deadly 'Double Tap' Missile Hit: Video

A video that emerged on Friday shows what appears to be the moment a Russian missile struck a hotel in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia that is regularly used by United Nations staff.

At least one person was killed and 19 others were wounded in what appears to be a "double tap" strike on the hotel, according to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. Yuriy Malashko, governor of Zaporizhzhia, said four children were among the injured.

A double-tap strike is a military tactic where an area is hit by two separate attacks that occur within a relatively short time frame, with the aim of targeting those who attempt to provide aid at the scene.

The incident came almost a day after another attack by Russia in a residential part of the city killed three people and wounded nine others, including a baby, according to officials.

The video, which circulated on Telegram on Friday, shows smoke emerging from the hotel, which is located in the city center, after what appears to be an initial strike. The camera pans to the sky and shows another missile moving toward the building, striking it and causing a huge explosion.

Newsweek couldn't immediately verify the authenticity of the video.

Jimmy Rushton, a Kyiv-based foreign policy and security analyst, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that the video shows a Russian cruise missile, either a Kh-101/555 or a Kalibr-family type, hitting the hotel "in a 'double tap' strike deliberately intended to kill first responders."

Denise Brown, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, in a statement on Thursday slammed the strike against the hotel.

"I am appalled by the news that a hotel frequently used by United Nations personnel and our colleagues from NGOs supporting people affected by the war has been hit by a Russian strike in Zaporizhzhia shortly ago," she said. "I have stayed in this hotel every single time I visited Zaporizhzhia."

Brown said the number of "indiscriminate" attacks hitting civilian infrastructure, killing and injuring civilians, has reached an "unimaginable level." She called on Russia to comply with international humanitarian law and to "immediately stop indiscriminate attacks on Ukraine."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Zaporizhzhia "suffers daily from Russian shelling."

"A fire broke out in a civilian building after the occupiers hit it with a missile," he said.

The Ukrainian World Congress, a nonprofit organization founded in 1967, said Friday that the hotel "also had a children's camp during the day."

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

The missile strikes come about two months into Ukraine's counteroffensive to recapture territory seized by Russia throughout the conflict. The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank, said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front and advanced in the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia border area on August 10.

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