Ukraine said at least 50 people were killed on Friday and many others wounded in a missile strike at a railway station packed with civilians fleeing the threat of a Russian offensive in the country’s east.
As regional authorities scrambled to continue evacuating the vulnerable, European Union leaders visited Kyiv to offer President Volodymyr Zelenskiy support and expedite Ukraine’s path toward EU membership. read more
Zelenskiy called the strike in Kramatorsk in the eastern region of Donetsk a deliberate attack on civilians. The town’s mayor estimated about 4,000 people were gathered there at the time.
Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said the station was hit by a Tochka U short-range ballistic missile containing cluster munitions, which explode in mid-air, spraying small lethal bomblets over a wider area. read more
“They wanted to take as many civilians as possible,” he said, adding that evacuations by rail from the region, where Ukrainian officials are anticipating a new thrust by Russian forces, would continue.
Reuters was unable to verify what happened in Kramatorsk.
Cluster munitions are banned under a 2008 convention. Russia has not signed it but has previously denied using such armaments in Ukraine. read more
In Washington, a senior defense official said the United States was “not buying the denial by the Russians that they weren’t responsible”, and believed Kyrylenko correctly identified the type of missile used in the attack. read more
The Russian defence ministry was quoted by RIA news agency as saying the missiles said to have struck the station were used only by Ukraine’s military and that Russia’s armed forces had no targets assigned in Kramatorsk on Friday.
Zelenskiy said no Ukrainian troops were at the station. “Russian forces (fired) on an ordinary train station, on ordinary people,” he told Finland’s parliament in a video address.
Kramatorsk Mayor Oleksander Honcharenko told an online briefing that some victims of the attack had lost a leg or arm.
Source: Reuters.com