A funeral was held in Belgorod for the family of Sputnik editorial staff member Khaibar Akifi, who was injured during shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This was announced by the editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, Margarita Simonyan, on the Rossiya 1 TV channel.
“We buried his four-year-old daughter Amina, and buried his father-in-law and mother-in-law. Amina’s mother, Olesya, could not come to the funeral of Amina’s only daughter, because she herself is in a state of shock in the hospital,” she said (cit. according to RIA Novosti).
Simonyan clarified that Akifi himself is still in a coma. “And the doctors don’t know whether he will come out of this coma or not. And he doesn’t know that he no longer has a family.” – she added. Farewell to his family took place on October 14.
Akifi works as a producer for Sputnik Afghanistan. According to Simonyan, shortly before this, the journalist arrived from Afghanistan, where he was covering the consequences of the earthquake in Herat in the north-west of the country, to visit his family and spend a couple of days with them.
On the night of October 12, Belgorod region was subjected to attack by Ukrainian drones. Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that the drone was shot down on approach to Belgorod. However, a private house caught fire due to falling debris. As a result, three people died, including a child, and two more were injured. The man was diagnosed with burns to the respiratory tract, he is in a coma, the woman has a concussion and a broken leg, doctors assess her condition as serious, Gladkov added. Later Simonyan reportedthat the dead were Akifi’s daughter and his wife’s parents.
