Volodymyr Zelenskiy said more than 1,000 people were in the shopping center at the time of the attack.
Kyiv, Ukraine:
The damage from a Russian missile attack on a shopping center in the city center of Kremenchuk has increased to 16 dead and 59 injured, the head of Ukraine’s emergency services said. Ukraine’s emergency services said early Tuesday.
“As of now, we know of 16 dead and 59 injured, 25 of them hospitalized. Information is being updated,” Sergiy Kruk said on Telegram.
He said the main tasks were “rescue work, debris removal and fire removal” following Monday’s strike on the mall.
Another act of the Russian genocide of the Ukrainian people. This time, the decoders target a shopping mall in #Kremenchuk, in the afternoon when it’s always especially crowded. War criminals wanted to kill civilians, deliberately aiming for maximum casualties. pic.twitter.com/3PbCnjc7PU
– Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) June 27, 2022
Earlier, Zelensky had said that “more than a thousand civilians” were in the shopping center when the rocket hit the city, which had a pre-war population of 220,000.
“The mall is on fire, the rescue team is on fire. The number of victims is unimaginable,” Zelensky wrote on Facebook.
A video shared by Ukraine’s president shows the shopping center engulfed in flames with dozens of rescue workers and a fire truck outside.
Emergency services also released images showing the smoldering remains of the building, with firefighters and rescuers trying to clear debris.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said the attack was deliberately arranged to coincide with the busiest hours of the mall and cause the maximum number of victims.
The Ukrainian Air Force said the mall was hit by a Kh-22 anti-ship missile launched by a Tu-22 bomber from the Kursk region in western Russia.
City mayor Vitali Maletsky wrote on Facebook: “The missile firing at Kremenchuk hit a very crowded area with no connection to hostilities.”
Lunin denounced the attack as a “war crime” and a “crime against humanity”, saying it was an “abhorrent act of terror against civilians”.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Kyiv’s allies to provide more heavy weapons and impose new sanctions on Russia.
“Russia is a disgrace to humanity and it must face consequences,” he wrote on Twitter.
Presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak accused Russia of being a “terrorist state”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter that “the world is appalled by today’s Russian missile attack on a crowded shopping center in Ukraine – the latest in a series of atrocities. “.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the attack showed the “depth of cruelty and barbarism” of Russian leader Putin.
And the French foreign ministry also condemned the attack.
“By indiscriminately bombing civilians and civilian infrastructure, Russia continues to fearlessly violate international humanitarian law,” it wrote on Twitter.
“Russia must be held accountable for its actions.”
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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