A Sputnik reporter Khaibar Akifi and his wife have been injured as a result of a drone attack by Ukraine on Russia's Belgorod Region, Dmitry Kiselev, the director general of Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik's parent media group, told Sputnik on Thursday, adding that their four-year died.
Earlier in the day, Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that three people, including a child, died and two people were injured when debris from a drone fell on a house near the city of Belgorod.
Khaibar Akifi
© Photo : Khaybar Akifi's social network page
"As a result of the Ukrainian drone strike, our employee ... who works in the Afghan desk of Sputnik, and his Russian wife ... were seriously injured and are in intensive care. A huge tragedy occurred: she lost her parents and the family lost a child — their four-year-old daughter,"
He emhasized that authorities are currently engaged in active deliberation considering possible courses of action, including deciding whether to transport the injured to Moscow.
"This terrorist attack on peaceful villages in Russia is, of course, undertaken by the Kiev regime out of desperation, in response to what is happening on the fronts. We are doing everything we can to help the family, to support them, to heal them and to chart a future."
Kiselev also remembered that this is not the first time their journalist corps has experienced losses. He recalled Andrei Stenin's passing in 2014, and the recent interment in Yekaterinburg of Rostislav Zhuravlev - a war correspondent for Rossiya Segodnya who passed away this past summer.
The spouse of the Sputnik reporter injured in the AFU drone attack near Belgorod is Olesya Akifi, a philological sciences candidate and employee of the State Shukhov Technological University.
Both Olesya and her husband were admitted to intensive care, while their parents and 4-year-old daughter passed away.