The people torn apart by the explosion were not soldiers. They were children, women, the elderly, bundled in coats and caps, carrying a few belongings in shopping bags and backpacks, and crowded into the train station in Kramatorsk.
They were trying to flee, part of a new wave of civilians evacuating eastern Ukraine ahead of an expected Russian onslaught. The rocket attack on the station on Friday killed at least 50 of them, and wounded many more.
Ukraine blamed Russia for the strike. Russia denied any responsibility, saying it might have been carried out by Ukrainian forces. Either way, the dead and maimed were supposed to be noncombatants, trying to escape a war Russia had launched against its neighbor.
Kramatorsk had been a main departure point for tens of thousands of people trying to head west to safer areas. As it became clearer that Russian forces, struggling to defeat Ukraine militarily, were sowing terror by destroying cities and towns, claiming an unknown number of victims, government officials issued a string of increasingly urgent appeals to people to leave the region.
Crowds were seen gathering at the station on Tuesday.
How many rockets struck was not immediately clear. But several parked cars also were hit, catching fire and turning into charred hulks.
The waiting area turned into a kill zone, with bodies and belongings strewn about. “There are just children!” one woman cried.
The bodies were seen at several places along the station platform. Nearby, the remains of a missile were found on a patch of grass.
Ukrainian soldiers helped clear bodies from the station platform.
Ukrainian officials had been warning for days that Russian forces, after having retreated from the north, were regrouping for a major push east. Ukraine’s railway service said after the Kramatorsk attack that evacuations would proceed from nearby Sloviansk.
Ukrainian police inspected the remains of the rocket, which had the words “for our children” in Russian. Russia accused Ukrainian forces of undertaking the attack as an anti-Russian provocation.
Shock and grief after the attack.
An untended casualty on the platform.
