Residents of the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, neighbors of the shopping mall “Amstor”, where the Russian attack on Monday left dozens dead, injured and missing, reject the Russian version’s claim that the target was a military warehouse.
“This is ridiculous. I wonder how they can believe such things. It’s an invention,” said Polina Puchintseva, who lived on the fourth floor of a building across from “Amstor.”
Another resident of the neighborhood, Antonina Chumilova, said: “There is absolutely no military infrastructure next to Amstor. There is a football field behind the shopping center.”
The Russian military claims it attacked a Western arms depot at a construction machinery factory near where the fire spread to a shopping mall it says was empty.
There is a construction machinery factory about ten minutes’ walk from “Amstor”. The site was visited by AFP journalists on Tuesday and found that one of the buildings had collapsed and the rest remained intact without any traces of military supplies.
One day after the attack, residents of the neighborhood are in shock. “I was in the kitchen, I heard a noise and the windows broke,” said Polina Puchintseva.
More than 200 km from the front line, the building turned into a pile of rubble covered with black smoke.
The missile attack set off a fire at the mall at a busy time that left at least 20 dead and dozens injured.
“My brother came running home, we took the documents, the money and ran away,” said Polina.
“Everything burned. I heard screams, it was terrible. I knew the mall employees,” he said.
He returned home one night later on Tuesday morning. “There are no words to describe it. They killed people who did nothing wrong,” he complains.
no chance of survival
Four giant cranes were deployed to remove the debris. The parking lot was occupied by fire trucks, rescue vehicles and the Ukrainian army.
Operations were halted for more than an hour after the bombing warning sirens sounded.
Antonina Chumilova watched everything from her living room, whose door was broken at the moment of impact.
“I heard the warning siren, and ten minutes later, there were two explosions, one second apart,” he says, just before the Russian attack.
He was with a client at the time. They rushed into the hall and waited before going out into the street. “In about 15 minutes, they all burned out,” he explained.
Ivan Melekhovets told AFP that “it is not possible to survive” a fire with such high temperatures.
“The hardest thing is to see the bodies of adults and children,” said the rescuer, who joined the search on Monday.
“Now we are trying to find missing persons aged 50-60,” he said.
source: Noticias
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