At least 39 people have been killed and nearly 100 wounded in a rocket attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine, according to a regional official.
In an online post on Friday, Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko revised an earlier estimate of 30 killed and said many of the 87 wounded were in a serious condition. A Ukrainian intelligence official said four children were among those killed.
Ukrainian officials accused Russia for the attack, saying it took place as civilians were at the station in an attempt to evacuate to safer parts of the country. Russia, however, denied any involvement.
“Two rockets hit Kramatorsk railway station,” Ukrainian Railways said in a statement.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, head of the railway company, called it “a deliberate attack on the passenger infrastructure of the railway and the residents of Kramatorsk”.
INTERACTIVE Russia Ukraine War Who controls what Day 43
(Al Jazeera)
AFP news agency said its journalists on the scene saw at least 20 bodies of people grouped and lying under plastic sheets next to the station. Blood was pooling on the ground and packed bags were strewn outside the building in the immediate aftermath of the attack, it reported.
The journalists said four cars next to the station had been destroyed and the remains of a large rocket with the words “for our children” in Russian were lying adjacent to the main building. Bodies were later seen being loaded onto a military truck.
“This is just an ordinary railway terminal … just an ordinary town in the east of Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said in a video address to the Finnish parliament.
“This is how Russia came to protect the Donbas, how they view the protection of the Russian speaking population. And this is the forty fourth day of our reality,” he added, referring to the time that has passed since Russia launched its invasion on February 24.
Earlier on Friday, Kyrylenko had said thousands of people had been at the station at the time the rockets struck.
Source: Aljazeera
