A building damaged by a Russian missile strike in Kramatorsk, Ukraine
by Max Hunder
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – Two Russian missiles hit a restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian town of Kramatorsk on Tuesday, killing at least four people and injuring 42, Ukrainian police and military said, as that rescuers searched the ruins of the building in search of victims or survivors.
The shelling occurred around 8:00 p.m. local time.
Under the gaze of residents trying to comfort each other, rescuers, police and soldiers were busy in the rubble of the building, reduced to a tangle of metal beams and concrete.
“I rushed here after the explosion because I was the manager of a cafe here… Everything was blown up,” Valentina, 64, told Reuters. “There’s nothing left of the glass, the panes, the doors. All I see is destruction, fear and horror. It’s the 21st century.”
Kramatorsk, a large city located west of the front line in the Donetsk region, has already been bombed by Russia, notably when a strike on the railway station killed 63 people in April 2022.
Russia, which launched an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, denies targeting civilian sites.
(Written by Ron Popeski, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse and Bertrand Boucey)