A Russian missile killed two 14-year-old twin sisters, among 11 people who were in a restaurant in the city of Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine.
The education department of the Kramatorsk City Council said in a Facebook post that the sisters, Anna and Yulia Aksenchenko, would have turned 15 in September.
Emergency services said 11 bodies were pulled from the rubble early Wednesday night, some 24 hours after a missile hit the restaurant, reducing it to a heap of rubble.
It also said that at least three children were among the dead, and 56 people were injured.
In response to a question about the attack on Kramatorsk, the Kremlin claimed, on Wednesday, that Russia had attacked only military targets, not civilian ones.
The Russian Defense Ministry later said that a temporary command center for the Ukrainian army had been bombed in Kramatorsk.
“I ran here after the explosion,” said Valentina, a 64-year-old woman who declined to give her full name. “Everything there was blown away.”
“Nothing was left of glass, windows, or doors. All I saw was destruction, fear, and horror,” she told Reuters.
russia is a terrorist state! 😢💔🕯 It is with sadness and unbearable pain that we report the death of two Aksenchenko…
Posted by Volodymyr Zaitsev on Wednesday, June 28, 2023
A second missile hit a village on the outskirts of Kramatorsk, injuring four people.
The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, said in his evening video message, Tuesday, that the attacks showed that Russia “deserves only one thing as a result of what it is doing, defeat and then trial.”
Ukrainian cities have often been subjected to Russian strikes since the start of its invasion in February 2022, but Moscow still denies deliberately targeting civilians.
“Unfortunately, we were not surprised by Russia’s behaviour,” said Vedant Patel, deputy spokesman for the US State Department, when asked about the strike.
“While others focus on finding a way to end this war, Russia is doing these strikes,” he added.
Kramatorsk is located to the west of the Donetsk region, which makes it a potential target during any Russian advance to the west.
The city has been a frequent target of Russian attacks, with a missile strike killing 63 people at a railway station there in April 2022, one of the worst in the ongoing war on Ukraine.
#years #Twin #girls #among #victims #Russias #bombing #restaurant #Kramatorsk
2023-06-28 20:29:41
