President Volodymyr Zelensky reported 300 were injured, saying the strike that also killed five children showed “evil with no limits”
A rocket attack on a train station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed dozens, including five children, on Friday, as civilians raced to flee the Donbas region bracing for a feared Russian offensive.
World leaders condemned the attack with US President Joe Biden accusing Russia of being behind an “horrific atrocity” while the French government called it a “crime against humanity” and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson described it as “unconscionable”.
Fifty people were killed, including five children, the regional governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said as the toll rose on one of the deadliest strikes of the six-week-old war.
President Volodymyr Zelensky reported 300 were injured, saying the strike showed “evil with no limits”.
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Odessa, fearing an attack on the Black Sea port city, imposed a weekend curfew “given events in Kramatorsk” and the “threat of a missile strike”.
AFP journalists at the scene of Friday’s strike saw the bodies of at least 30 people under plastic sheets next to the station.
There were pools of blood on the ground and packed bags were strewn outside the building where the remains of a large rocket was lying with the words “for our children” in Russian.
“I’m looking for my husband. He was here. I can’t reach him,” a woman told AFP, sobbing and holding her phone to her ear.
Another woman in a state of shock said: “I saw people covered in blood entering the station and bodies everywhere on the ground.”
Body parts, broken glass and abandoned baggage lay scattered around the station and across the platform.
Russia’s defence ministry said suggestions it had carried out the attack were “absolutely untrue”.
The bombing came as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell were in Kyiv to show solidarity with Ukraine.
Russia faces “decay” because of ever more stringent sanctions and Ukraine had a “European future”, she said at a news conference with Zelensky.
More than a month into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has shifted its focus to eastern and southern Ukraine after stiff resistance torpedoed plans to swiftly capture the capital Kyiv.
Heavy shelling has already begun to lay waste to towns in the region, and officials have begged civilians to flee, while the intensity of fighting is impeding evacuations.
But officials continued to press civilians to leave.
“There is no secret — the battle for Donbas will be decisive. What we have already experienced — all this horror — it can multiply,” warned Lugansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday.
“Leave! The next few days are the last chances. Buses will be waiting for you in the morning,” he added.
Instead, Russian troops appear set on creating a long-sought land link between occupied Crimea and the Moscow-backed separatist statelets of Donetsk and Lugansk in Donbas.
