Moscow accuses Ukraine of attack; The railway station is used for evacuating citizens.
Moscow accuses Ukraine of attack; The railway station is used for evacuating citizens.
A rocket attack on a train station in Ukraine’s eastern city of Kramtorsk killed 50 people on Friday, Ukrainian officials said, as civilians raced to leave the Donbass region in the crosshairs of Russian forces.
Images taken from the scene showed tarp-covered bodies on the ground and the remains of a rocket with the words “for children” in Russian. Ukraine’s prosecutor-general’s office said about 4,000 civilians were in and around the station, adding that most women and children were calling to leave the area before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country’s east. .
President Volodymyr Zelensky reported that 300 people were injured, adding that the strike showed “evil without limits”. AFP Journalists at 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.
However, Russia accused Kyiv of carrying out the deadly attack. The Defense Ministry said, “The Kyiv regime’s attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk was intended to disrupt the mass evacuation of residents from the city so that they could be used as a ‘human shield’ to defend the position of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” ” , “The Tochka-U tactical missiles, fragments of which were found near the railway station in Kramatorsk, are used only by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the ministry said.
The station is used to evacuate civilians from areas under bombardment by the Russian military.
“Two rockets hit Kramatorsk railway station. There have been casualties,” Ukraine’s railways said in a statement. It did not give any other details.
According to the head of Ukraine’s railways, three trains carrying evacuations in the same region of Ukraine were stopped on Thursday after an airstrike on the line.
Ukrainian officials say Russian forces are regrouping for a new offensive, and Moscow plans to seize much of the territory in the eastern part of Ukraine, known as the Donbass, bordering Russia. goes.
Local authorities in some areas are urging citizens to leave for as long as it is possible and relatively safe to do so.
(with inputs from AP and Reuters)