Russian strike kills 50 at Ukraine rail station

Kyiv: At least 50 persons were killed in Friday's air strike at a crowded rail station in eastern Ukraine's contested Donbas region.

A Russian missile hit the Kramatorsk city train station where thousands of people had flocked to flee the war, Ukrainian authorities said.

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.

About 4,000 civilians were in and around the station, the office of Ukraine's prosecutor-general said, adding that most were women and children heeding calls to leave the area before Russia launches a full-scale offensive in the country's east.

The Russian Defence Ministry, however, denied attacking the station, but President Volodymyr 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, he added.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the regional governor of Donetsk, which lies in the Donbas, said that 50 people were killed, including five children, and many dozens more were wounded.