Graphic pictures on Friday from Kramatorsk showed bodies strewn across the floor, lying amongst luggage and children's prams outside the city's busy station. Some had already been put into green body bags, while other photos showed smoke rising from the building as firefighters rushed to the scene.
Pictures also showed the wreckage of a large missile lying on the grass outside the station. White Russian text was shown written down the side of its casing, which read: 'For (our) Children' - a chilling revenge message from the pro-Moscow soldiers that launched it.
Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky took to Instagram to decry the attack, and confirmed the reports of casualties. '[Russian forces] are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop,' he wrote. He said no Ukrainian soldiers were at the station when it was hit.
The Mayor of Kramatorsk Oleksander Honcharenko said there were around 4,000 people at the city's railway station when it was bombed by at least two rockets. He said most were women, elderly and children preparing to evacuate to safer regions as Russia focuses its troops in eastern Ukraine.
Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko also said thousands of people were there at the time of the strikes, and later gave an updated death toll - saying at least 39 people were killed and 87 wounded - after it was initially reported 30 were killed. In an online post, he said many of the wounded were in a serious condition.
The EU directly accused Russia of the 'horrifying' attack, while Britain's defence secretary Ben Wallace called it a 'war crime' that used 'precision missiles'.
From the pictures, military commentators said the missile used in the attack was a Soviet-era Tochka U missile - accurate to within 200 to 500 feet. The station is found in the centre of Kramatorsk - a town of more than 150,000 people. Both Russian and Ukraine both still use the missiles, and the evacuations would have been known about.
According to Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Moscow's defence agency denied the attack, saying the missile was of a type used only by the Ukrainian military, and similar to one that hit the centre of the city of Donetsk on March 14, killing 17 people, RIA reported. However pictures from the scene show it was painted green, while Ukrainian versions are painted grey, according to experts.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...n-missile-hits-Ukrainian-railway-station.html
