A Russian rocketstrike in Ukraine killed a 17-year-old girl and injured an eight-month-old baby, officials have said.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the young teenager is among four others who have died and at least 42 who were injured in the attack.
Today has seen Moscow send two rockets into Ukraine – hitting a civilian shopping centre which housed restaurants and cafes in the city of Kramatorsk and the nearby village Bilenke.
Journalists have said a pizza restaurant destroyed in the violence was a popular dining choice for war correspondents in the area.
Reporter Arnaud De Decker posted a photo of his pizza and beer from inside the venue, saying it was taken just 20 minutes before the explosions.
He said ‘people were still screaming underneath the rubble’ an hour after the rockets had hit.
Emergency services worked into the night to search for victims who may have still been stuck.
Governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, told Ukrainian TV: ‘This is the city centre. These were public eating places crowded with civilians.’
Iuliia Mendel, the spokesperson for President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted a clip of a building almost completely destroyed with smoke billowing from the top of it.
The attacks are believed to have been carried out with two S-300 missiles.
Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska said: ‘Terrorists from RF attack civilians again. Kramatorsk, missile attack on a restaurant in the city center. Crowded place, evening — enemy do not want normal life in Ukraine.
‘There are a lot of wounded. It is painful. Evil must be punished.’
She likewise highlighted that today’s strike has actually occurred on the anniversary of a fatal attack on Amstor shopping center in the centre of Kremenchuk.
More than 20 individuals were eliminated and 59 hurt in the catastrophe which happened precisely a year back.
More than 1,000 individuals were inside the structure when it was struck by a Russian Soviet- period Kh-22 rocket rollovering 900 kgs of dynamites, Mr Zelensky stated at the time.
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