Emergency workers search the rubble of a Russian rocket attack that killed at least 49 people in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine [Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP]
Thu 05 October 2023:
Ukrainian officials say at least 51 people have been killed after a Russian missile hit a supermarket in the Kupiansk district of Kharkiv region.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko says residents of Hroza, which has a population of about 330 people, were attending a memorial service at the cafe that was hit.
“From every family, from every household, there were people present at this commemoration,” he told Ukrainian television.
“This is a terrible tragedy.”
Hroza is located about 40 kilometers from the frontlines of the war near Kupiansk, the city in Kharkiv that Russian forces seized early on in the war before losing it a year ago.
Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi is in Zaporizhzhia, about five to six hours south of the site of the attack in the village of Hroza.
He said the news of the daylight attack on apparent civilian targets has resonated with people all along the front lines.
“Hroza is a village quite some distance from the front-line positions in Kharkiv; that’s why it comes as a surprise,” Basravi added.
“It is one of the worst attacks that happened in recent memory, and it is certainly the biggest death toll … in Ukraine in the last few months.”
The UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine said images arriving from the scene of the attack “are absolutely horrifying,” accusing Russian forces of carrying out a war crime.
“Our thoughts are also with the people of Ukraine, who had to witness today, once again, another barbaric consequence of Russia’s invasion,” Denise Brown said.
“Intentionally directing an attack against civilians or civilian objects is a war crime. Intentionally launching an attack knowing that it would be disproportionate is a war crime.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack was “a demonstrably brutal Russian crime – a rocket attack on an ordinary grocery store, a completely deliberate terrorist attack.”
“Russian terror must be stopped. Anyone who helps Russia circumvent sanctions is a criminal. Everyone who still supports Russia is supporting evil,” Zelensky said on the sidelines of a European leaders summit in Granada, in southern Spain.
“Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for one thing only: to make its genocidal aggression the new normal for the whole world.”
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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