Ukraine is mourning 18 people, including nine children, killed in a Russian ballistic missile strike on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home city of Kryvyi Rig.
Sixty-one people were wounded, 12 of them children, Dnipropetrovsk governor Sergiy Lysak said after emergency operations were completed overnight.
The missile attack on Friday, one of the deadliest in recent weeks, struck a residential area near a children’s playground, said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of Kryvyi Rig’s military administration.
“On 7, 8 and 9 April, days of mourning will be declared in Kryvyi Rig for those killed as a result of yesterday’s terrorist attacks on our city by the killer country,” he said.
“Children, families, the elderly… Ballistic missile and shakedown attacks on residential areas and playgrounds… This is nothing less than a mass murder of civilians.”
Pictures circulated by rescue services showed several bodies, one stretched out near a playground swing.
Russia’s defense ministry said it “delivered a precision strike with a high-explosive missile on a restaurant” in the city “where commanders of formations and Western instructors were meeting.”
It said its air defense units had intercepted and destroyed 49 Ukrainian drones overnight.
The commander of the Ukrainian army who accused Russia of “war crimes”, retorted that Moscow was “trying to cover up its cynical crime” and “spreading false information” about the target of the strike.
Earlier on Saturday, the Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 92 drones across Ukraine overnight.
Fifty one had been shot down and around 30 others had landed without causing damage.
