KYIV, Oct 8 (Reuters) – A Russian bomb attack on the embattled eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed at least 12 people, authorities said on Thursday, the latest strike on a key stronghold coveted by Moscow.
Another 14 people were wounded in the morning attack on a street where two city buses were operating, police said. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described it as a bus stop.
Images posted by police showed bodies strewn across a street littered with debris, as well as a charred shell of what appeared to be a bus.
“These are not ‘the consequences of war’, nor dry statistics. These are people killed by the Russian army,” regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on the Telegram app.
“Russia comes to Ukrainian land with death.”
Moscow’s forces have stepped up drone and guided-bomb strikes on Kramatorsk and other cities in Ukraine’s so-called “fortress belt”, local officials say, the backbone of its defences in the Donetsk region.
Russia has demanded that Ukraine cede the rest of the region still under its control before it stops fighting, which Kyiv refuses to do.
Thursday’s attack came a day after dozens were killed in a massive Russian air attack across Ukraine, primarily targeting the country’s power grid.
(Reporting by Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Gareth Jones and Andrew Heavens)
