A Russian missile strike on a village grocery store and café in Ukraine’s east on Thursday killed at least 49 people, Ukrainian officials said, in one of the worst attacks on civilians since the start of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion last year.
The devastation in the small village of Hroza, in the eastern Kharkiv region, came as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended a summit of European leaders in a bid to shore up support for his country’s fight amid fears of a U.S.-led wobble.
“A demonstrably brutal Russian crime — a missile attack on an ordinary grocery store, a completely deliberate act of terrorism,” Zelenskyy wrote on the messaging app Telegram. “Russian terror must be stopped.”
Ukraine’s foreign ministry accused Russia of having “deliberately and barbarically attacked civilian targets.”
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote on Telegram that a 6-year-old child was among those killed. He said the population of Hroza was just 300.
“There may still be people under the rubble of the destroyed shop and café, so rescuers, police and local residents continue to sort through the debris,” he said.
Moscow did not immediately comment on the accusations from Kyiv. It has consistently denied targeting civilians, despite documentary and witness evidence showing that it has often killed and injured nonmilitary personnel, as in previous conflicts.
The missile strike on Hroza would be one of the deadliest attacks on civilians during the war.
In April last year, cluster munitions hit a train station in Kramatorsk, killing 60 people. And an Associated Press investigation found that around 600 people may have been killed after a theater in Mariupol was bombed while civilians sheltered inside — although this total has not been confirmed.
Last month, another missile strike in Kostiantynivka, a city 80 miles to the south of Hroza, was blamed on Russia by Ukrainian officials. An investigation by The New York Times said there was evidence it was in fact an errant Ukrainian missile gone off course.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
