Missile kills dozens of evacuees at Ukrainian train station

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A missile hit a crowded train station in eastern Ukraine that was an evacuation point for civilians, killing dozens of people Friday, Ukrainian authorities said while warning they expected to find more evidence of possible war crimes in parts of the country previously held by Russian troops.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said thousands of people were waiting to board trains at the station when the missile struck.

Photos from the scene showed bodies covered with tarps on the ground and the remnants of a rocket with the words “For the children” painted on it in Russian.

The Russian Defence Ministry denied attacking the station in Kramatorsk, a city in the eastern Donetsk region, but Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian leaders accused Russia's military of deliberately targeting a location where only civilians were assembled.

“The inhuman Russians are not changing their methods. Without the strength or courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population,” the president said on social media.

“This is an evil without limits. And if it is not punished, then it will never stop.”

The regional governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said that 39 people were killed and 87 wounded. The office of Ukraine's prosecutor-general said about 4,000 civilians were in and around the station, most of them women and children heeding calls to leave the area before Russia launches a full-scale offensive.

“The people just wanted to get away for evacuation,” Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said while visiting Bucha, a town north of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, where journalists and returning Ukrainians discovered scores of bodies on streets and in mass graves after Russian troops withdrew.

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