Tetiana Ihnatchenko, a spokeswoman for the Donetsk region where the attack took place, said first responders had confirmed the initial casualty figures and warned the numbers were likely to rise. At least 100 people have been injured so far.
Local police said in a statement that the rockets hit a makeshift waiting room where “hundreds of people were waiting for the evacuation train.”
“This is further evidence that Russia is brutally and barbarically killing civilian Ukrainians with only one goal – to kill,” the mayor of Kramatorsk said in a statement.
The mayor said about 8,000 people a day went to the train station to evacuate for the past two weeks. Up to 4,000 people were there when the rocket hit.
The Kremlin has not yet commented on the allegations.
The eastern city of Kramatorsk was one of the first places to be attacked by the Russian military when the February 24 invasion of Ukraine began. Ihnatchenko said Ukrainians had been using the station to evacuate the region since late February.
“Russians knew that there are thousands of people there (at the station) every day,” she said.
According to Oleksandr Kamyshin, head of Ukraine’s national railway system, two rockets hit the station. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said the Russian military used short-range Iskander-type ballistic missiles.
CNN Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour said the attack was reminiscent of one in a Sarajevo marketplace during the Bosnian War, where “ordinary civilians were massacred as they went about their business.”
Amanpour said such attacks on civilians tended to harden Western resolve and could push the European Union to impose even more sanctions on Russia. Brussels has already done so authorized five rounds of sanctions against Russia since it invaded Ukraine.
EU top diplomat Josep Borrell condemned the “indiscriminate attack”, EU President Charles Michel called it “terrible”.
“This is yet another attempt to close escape routes for those fleeing this unjust war and cause human suffering,” Borrell said.
Borrell and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv this week.
The attack comes as Russian forces prepare for a massive operation in eastern Ukraine to take the contested Donbass region, Ukrainian authorities say.
The Donbass is home to the so-called People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, two separatist enclaves that Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized as independent shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine.
For nearly eight years, the two regions have been the scene of a low-intensity war between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces. More than 14,000 people died in the fighting, and now Kyiv is bracing for more casualties.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the “battle for Donbass” was already underway. He said the fighting there would be reminiscent of the devastating battles during World War II, as Moscow’s offensive could involve “thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, aircraft, artillery.”
British intelligence estimates that Russian troops from northern Ukraine have “fully withdrawn to Belarus and Russia” and many may be transferred to eastern Ukraine to fight in Donbass. Ukrainian military officials also said they observed a buildup of Russian forces in the east.
CNN’s Joshua Berlinger, Ivan Watson and Khrystyna Bondarenko contributed to this report