Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that at least 48 people were killed in a Russian strike that hit a grocery store in the northeast Kharkiv region.
Zelenskyy condemned the “demonstrably brutal Russian crime,” calling it “a rocket attack on an ordinary grocery store” and labelling it a “terrorist attack.” He said more than 48 people were killed, and the country’s prosecutor general later put the death toll at at least 49.
Images shared online by Zelenskyy’s office showed emergency workers examining a huge pile of crushed concrete and twisted metal at the scene of the purported strike, while others showed the bodies of victims laying on the ground after being removed from the rubble.
Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP
“My condolences to all those who have lost their loved ones! Help is being provided to the wounded,” Zelenskyy said on his Telegram account. “Russian terror must be stopped. Anyone who helps Russia circumvent sanctions is a criminal.”
The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general, in a message also shared on the Telegram messaging app, said “we know [there are] about 49 dead, including a child, as well as 7 wounded.”
The governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Synehubov, said the building struck was a café and shop in the village of Hroza, Kharkiv’s Kupyansk district, and that the missile or shells hit at about 1:15 p.m. local time, when the business was busy.
“Rescuers continue to work at the site,” Synehubov said on Telegram.
Zelenskyy vowed that Ukraine would “respond to the terrorists. Absolutely fair. And powerful.”
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