Andriy Yermak/Telegram/Portal
Rescue workers are seen at the site of a Russian military attack in the village of Hroza in eastern Ukraine on October 5.
CNN –
A Russian missile attack killed at least 51 people, including a child, in a village near the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk on Thursday. This was one of the deadliest attacks on civilians since the conflict began, officials say.
According to Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, Moscow forces attacked a cafe and a shop in Hroza in the Kharkiv region shortly after noon local time.
After the attack, scenes emerged of rescue workers wading through dense rubble. Doctors are treating the six people injured in the strike.
The bodies of the deceased, including a six-year-old boy, were removed from the destroyed buildings, said Oleh Synehubov, a regional military official. The bodies of 29 victims have been identified, the Ukrainian Interior Minister said. The other bodies were taken to facilities in the city of Kharkiv.
There were locals in the store when the rocket hit, Ukraine’s interior minister said, unleashing levels of devastation not seen since an attack on a train station in Kramatorsk in early 2022 that killed more than 60 people was.
Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Portal
At least 51 people were killed in the attack in Hrova pictured on Thursday.
A memorial service for a fallen Ukrainian soldier was being held at the village cafe when the rocket hit, killing several members of the soldier’s family, Dmytro Chubenko, spokesman for the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office, told Ukrainian media outlet RBC.
The fallen Ukrainian soldier was previously buried in the city of Dnipro, but his relatives wanted him to be reburied in the village where he originally came from, Chubenko said.
“The wake was attended by the son of the deceased, who was also a soldier,” he said. “The son was in a cafe with his wife and mother and was killed by a rocket,” he added.
According to the latest death toll, the attack destroyed about a fifth of the village, where 330 people lived.
A similar attack occurred in the nearby town of Pervomaiske, when people also said goodbye to a fallen soldier, Chubenko also said. “His comrades were present at the time. Today there were only civilians at the scene of the attack.”
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Hroza was hit by an Iskander missile, according to Ukrainian officials. The Iskander is a relatively short-range ballistic missile that carries a warhead of 500 to 700 kilograms, depending on the configuration.
It was used extensively by the Russians against Ukraine, causing significant civilian casualties.
Hroza lies about 40 kilometers from the war front near Kupiansk, the city in Kharkiv that Russian troops captured early in the war before losing it a year ago.
The Ukrainian military has been trying to resist Moscow’s advances ever since. For Kiev, the city is strategically important to prevent Russia from accessing the nearby Oskil River, which is much easier to cross than further south.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said the attack showed Kiev needed more defense systems to “protect our country from terror” and feared military aid from Western allies could dwindle.
His comments came against a backdrop of political unrest in the US Congress, the legislative arm of the government, and depleted ammunition stocks in NATO countries, threatening the flow of military aid to Kiev.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack was “a demonstrably brutal Russian crime – a rocket attack on an ordinary grocery store, a completely premeditated terrorist attack.”
“Russian terror must be stopped. Anyone who helps Russia evade sanctions is a criminal. “Anyone who still supports Russia is supporting evil,” Zelensky said on the sidelines of a summit of European leaders in Granada, southern Spain.
“Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for one reason only: to make its genocidal aggression the new normal for the entire world.”
Zelensky sought confirmation from European leaders on Thursday, telling reporters that Europe’s “biggest challenge” would be maintaining its “unity” in the face of the Russian invasion.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal described the attack as “brutal and cynical.”
“Dozens of people were killed, including a child. It is impossible to describe this horror in words,” he posted on Telegram.
“We must stop Russian terror so that enemy rockets and shells do not claim more lives or injure more people. This can only be done in a coordinated and joint manner with the help and support of our partners,” Shmyhal added.
The UN humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine said images from the site of the attack were “absolutely horrifying” and accused Russian forces of committing a war crime.
“Our thoughts are also with the people of Ukraine, who today once again witnessed another barbaric consequence of the Russian invasion,” said Denise Brown.
“Deliberately targeting civilians or civilian objects is a war crime. Deliberately carrying out an attack knowing it would be disproportionate is a war crime.”