Svitlana Pelelygina stands astonished in the street, surveying the wreckage of her apartment building, which is still smoldering from the latest salvo of explosives to hit Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv.

“The whole home rumbled and trembled,” the 71-year-old told AFP on Sunday. “Everything here began to burn.”

“I called the firefighters. They said, ‘We are on our way but we were also being shelled.'”

Officials said five people were killed and 13 wounded in the latest volley to hit Kharkiv — just 21 kilometers (13 miles) from the border with Russia.

Since President Vladimir Putin called off his northern offensive to capture Kyiv, he has refocused the push onto Ukraine’s eastern flank.

Kharkiv is one of the strategic footholds now under near-constant bombardment by troops dug in outside the city gates.

“You know how when a dog hears a bang it starts to tremble all over even if the noise is far away? I’m like that now,” said 69 year-old Zinaida Nestrizhenko, huddled on the roadside with her pet cat rescued from her home.

“Everything, every part of me is trembling,” she said.

AFP reporters witnessed five distinct fires spreading in apartment units above stores in the once attractive downtown centre on Sunday afternoon after hearing two incoming bursts of shelling.

Several administrative buildings have already been demolished as a result of prior Russian airstrikes on the besieged city, which had a population of 1.4 million before the war.

After an emergency callout about 2 p.m. on Sunday, a fleet of 33 rescue vehicles and 150 firefighters were dispatched to more than 15 homes across the city, according to an official.

In the moments after the blasts, lumbering cherry-red fire vehicles tore in every direction, scattering pedestrians and cars.

The roads were lined with shattered glass and corrugated roof panellings, peeled off from the force of the detonations.

Crews frantically unravelled hoses and hooked up water pumps around every corner, as if there was a fresh location being catered to by them.

Rescue rescuers used an angle grinder to cut open a door and gain access to a rooftop blast by clambering up a high stairs.

Firefighters could be seen working quickly on another gutted home down the street through the hole in the roof.

A camel brown coat lay nearby, dumped on the sidewalk.

A puddle of fresh blood collected in the pavement, combining with rainwater pounding the city during a severe downpour, and coloured it red.