A rocket attack on a train station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed 50 people on Friday, Ukrainian authorities said, as civilians raced to leave the Donbas region in the crosshairs of the Russian army.
Photos from the scene showed bodies covered with tarps on the ground and the remnants of a rocket with the words “For the children” painted on it in Russian. About 4,000 civilians were in and around the station, the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor-general said, adding that most were women and children heeding calls to leave the area before Russia launches a full-scale offensive in the country’s east.
President Volodymyr Zelensky reported 300 were injured, saying the strike showed “evil with no limits”. AFP journalists on the scene saw the bodies of at least 30 people grouped and lying under plastic sheets next to the station, before being loaded onto a military truck.
Russia, however, accused Kyiv of carrying out the deadly attack. "The purpose of the Kyiv regime's attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk was to disrupt the mass exit of residents from the city in order to use them as a 'human shield' to defend the positions of Ukraine's armed forces," the Defence Ministry said. "Tochka-U tactical missiles, the fragments of which were found near the railway station of Kramatorsk, are used only by the Ukrainian armed forces," the Ministry added.
The station is used to evacuate civilians from areas under bombardment from Russian forces.
"Two rockets hit Kramatorsk railway station. There are casualties," Ukrainian Railways said in a statement. It gave no other details.
Three trains carrying evacuees were blocked in the same region of Ukraine on Thursday after an air strike on the line, according to the head of Ukrainian Railways.
Ukrainian officials say Russian forces have been regrouping for a new offensive, and that Moscow plans to seize as much territory as it can in the eastern part of Ukraine known as Donbas bordering Russia.
Local authorities in some areas have been urging civilians to leave the while it is still possible and relatively safe to do so.
(With inputs from AP and Reuters)
