Ukraine says at least 50 killed in missile strike on train station
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Ukrainian police inspecting a section of a Russian rocket that struck a train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on April 8. Photo: Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images
At least 50 people were killed and nearly 100 were hospitalized after a Russian missile struck a train station in the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on Friday, Ukrainian officials said.
What they're saying: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement that "thousands" of people fleeing the fighting in Ukraine's Donbas region were at the station awaiting evacuation at the time of the strike. It's another apparent instance of Russia bombing civilian targets during its invasion of Ukraine.
- "Russian non-humans do not abandon their methods," Zelensky said. "Lacking the strength and courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop."
- Zelensky said the station was hit by a Russian Tochka-U short-range ballistic missile, a Soviet-era weapon.
- The regional governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, wrote on Telegram that the strike killed 50 people and hospitalized 98 but added that "other victims will seek medical help within one or two days, so the number of victims will be constantly changing."
- Zelensky said earlier in an address to Finland's parliament that more than 300 people had been wounded.
- In a statement, Russia's Defense Ministry denied carrying out the strike.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday the strike was "an abomination."
- "At Kramatorsk railway station this morning, families waiting to leave suffered the unthinkable," Macron said, promising to support investigations into civilian deaths there and in other Ukrainian cities, like Bucha.
- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said during a news conference that the "unconscionable" bombing "shows the depths to which Putin's once-vaunted army has sunk," vowing that Russia's war crimes in Ukraine "will not go unnoticed or unpunished."
- "We do not know yet how many children were killed and injured in the attack, but we fear the worst," UNICEF's Ukraine representative Murat Sahin said in a statement. "Civilians, particularly children, must be protected from harm. The killing of children must stop now."
The big picture: At least 300 people were killed by a Russian airstrike on a theater in Mariupol, where Russian forces also struck an art school, a mosque and a children's hospital, Ukrainian authorities said.
- The United Nations Human Rights Council, from which Russia was suspended on Thursday, estimates that at least 1,611 civilians have been killed and 2,227 injured during the invasion.
- It said it believes the actual figure of civilian casualties is "considerably higher" but documentation efforts have been delayed by fighting.
- "Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes," the council said.
Go deeper ... WHO: Over 70 killed in attacks on Ukraine health facilities
Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.
