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A Ukrainian billionaire is said to be in critical condition after a shrapnel-filled bomb exploded at an apartment in Monaco.
Vadim Ermolaev, who is also known as Vadym Yermolaiev, is reportedly ‘fighting for his life’ alongside his partner and teenage son in a ‘targeted’ assassination attempt.
CCTV allegedly shows a suspect dropping off bags shortly before the blast at around 10pm on Monday. The backpack was believed to have been full of nuts and bolts.
According to French daily Le Figaro the attack appears to have been more of ‘warning’ than a deliberate attempt at murder.
The Ukrainian billionaire has been named by multiple sources as one of the victims.
A second victim, a woman thought to be in her 50s or 60s, is thought to be Ermolaev’s partner.
Witnesses claimed her feet are ‘missing’ and that she was ‘slumped over, covered in blood’ following the blast.
Silvano Ippolito, who lives across from the building where the explosion happened, described hearing it and seeing a little boy on the ground being attended to by other people. He then called his wife, a doctor, who provided first aid to the badly wounded woman.
‘She intervened very quickly, before the emergency services arrived, to apply tourniquets and perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, as the woman was losing consciousness,’ Ippolito said.
A man came out of the building covered in blood and staggering. As he tried to go down the stairs, the staircase collapsed, and he fell on Ippolito’s wife and a firefighter, he said.
The woman’s injuries were ‘a real disaster,’ Ippolito said. ‘I’m telling you, she had no foot.’