Firefighters and soldiers searched for survivors in the wreckage of a Ukrainian shopping mall today, and officials said 36 people are still missing after a Russian missile strike that killed at least 18 people.
Relatives of the disappeared gathered at a hotel across the street from the wreckage of the shopping center where the rescue teams set up a base.
Looking exhausted, firefighters sat on a sidewalk after a night of fighting fires and searching for survivors. Washing his face with a bottle of water, Oleksandr said his team worked all night to dig up the wreckage.
“We dug up five bodies. We couldn’t find anyone alive,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians in the attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, away from the front lines. He described it as “one of the toughest terrorist attacks in European history”.
Russia said the incident resulted from an attack on a legitimate military target. The country’s Ministry of Defense claimed that missiles were fired at a warehouse where weapons sent by the West were stored, and that an ammunition explosion there caused the fire in the nearby shopping mall.
While Moscow said the mall was unused and empty at the time of the attack, it denied injured survivors such as 43-year-old Ludmyla Mykhailets, who was shopping there with her husband when the explosion hurled her into the air.
“I flew upside down and shrapnel hit my body. Everything was falling apart,” he said at a nearby public hospital where he was being treated.
“It was hell,” said 45-year-old husband Mykola as blood dripped from the bandage around her head.
The leaders of the main democracies of the Group of Seven (G7) at a summit in Germany said the attack was “heinous”.
“Russian President (Vladimir) Putin and the criminals will be held to account,” the joint statement said.
Another missile hit not a military target but also a nearby factory, which was closed, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venicetova told Reuters.
“This is a question about crimes against humanity,” he said. “I think it’s like the systematic bombing of civilian infrastructure – for what purpose? Killing people to scare people, to terrorize our towns and villages.”
Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians in its “special military operation” that has razed cities, killed thousands and left millions of people from their homes.
The attack on Kremenchuk comes after days of Russian missile attacks away from the front lines escalated, including the first attacks on the capital, Kiev, in weeks.
Moscow also stepped up its bombardment of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, where Russian troops were repulsed in May. The Governor of Kharkov said five people were killed and 22 injured in the bombing that hit targets, including apartments and a school, on Monday.
source: Noticias
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