Death toll rises to 12 in Ukraine’s Kramatorsk after Russian strike

June 29 (Reuters) – Rescuers have pulled another body from the ruins of a restaurant in eastern Ukraine’s city of Kramatorsk, taking to 12 the death toll following a Russian missile strike, Ukraine’s emergency services said on Thursday.

Three children were among the dead, while 60 more people were wounded, the authorities said.

The restaurant building was reduced to a twisted web of metal beams.

“I ran here after the explosion because I rented a cafe here…. Everything has been blown out there,” said Valentyna, a 64-year-old woman who declined to give her surname.

“None of the glass, windows or doors are left. All I see is destruction, fear and horror. This is the 21st century,” she told a Reuters correspondent in Kramatorsk.

A second missile hit a village on the fringes of Kramatorsk, wounding five.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video message on Tuesday that the attacks showed Russia “deserved only one thing as a consequence of what it has done — defeat and a tribunal”.

Russia has frequently hit Ukrainian cities since its full-scale invasion in February 2022 but denies targeting civilians.

Kramatorsk lies west of front lines in Donetsk province and is a likely objective in any westward advance by Russia.

The city has been a frequent target of Russian attacks, and a missile strike killed 63 people at a railway station in April 2022.