Death toll from Russian strike in Ukraine’s Kramatorsk train station rises to 52

KYIV:

The number of civilians killed in the Russian strike on a train station in Ukraine’s Kramatorsk has increased to 52, with 109 people injured, a top official announced on Saturday.

In a social media post, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the military head in the Donetsk region where Kramatorsk is located, confirmed the toll but warned that “these numbers will inevitably increase”.

On Friday, Russian troops from the occupied territories in the Luhansk region deployed a Tochka-U system to carry out the cluster shelling on the Kramatorsk railway station, where some 4,000 people were waiting to be evacuated.

The victims included five children.

According to media reports, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has condemned the attack.

Writing on Instagram shortly after the attack, he said: “Lacking the strength and courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population.

“This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop.”

He added that there were no soldiers at the station.

The US, European Union (EU) and the UK have condemned the incident and have since announced additional military support for Ukraine.

The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told the BBC that the attack in Kramatorsk was another attempt to break morale after Russian forces were unable to win by fighting the Ukrainian army. IANS