At least three people were killed and 42 injured on Tuesday in a Russian rocket strike that hit a popular restaurant in central Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, local authorities said.
“The bodies of three deceased persons, including a minor born in 2008, have been removed from the rubble. Among the injured is a child born in 2022,” the interior ministry said on Telegram.
Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Service reported on Telegram that 42 people were injured in the strike that destroyed the Ria Pizza restaurant, an establishment popular with journalists and the military.
According to the Ukrainian police, Russia fired two S-300 surface-to-air rockets on this city of 150,000 inhabitants before the war, the only large agglomeration still under Ukrainian control in the east.
An Agence France-Presse reporter at the scene of the strike saw ambulances, police, soldiers and the city’s mayor near this restaurant, Ria Pizza, in front of which a crowd of residents gathered .
A chef in a dust-covered uniform, Rouslan, 32, said there were “quite a lot of people” in the restaurant at the time of the strike, pointing to the sky. “I was lucky,” he said.
Natalia, a woman standing outside, said her half-brother, 23-year-old Nikita, was inside in the pizza-making area. “They can’t get it out (from the debris), it was covered. Tiles fell on him, ”she added, in tears.
Kramatorsk, located about thirty kilometers from the front, has been targeted several times by deadly bombardments since the start of the Russian invasion.