NEW DELHI, June 27: At least two people have been killed and 20 others injured in a Russian missile that struck a shopping mall containing more than 1,000 people in the central city of Kremenchuk in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday. The casualties may rise further, the local reports said.
“The occupiers fired missiles at a shopping centre where there were over a thousand civilians… The number of victims is impossible to imagine,” Zelensky wrote in a Telegram post.
The news was first shared by the city’s mayor who had claimed there were unknown number of dead and wounded people in the attack on the “very crowded place.”
“A rocket attack on Kremenchuk hit a very crowded area, which is 100% certain not to have any links to the armed forces. There are killed and injured people,” the city’s mayor, Vitaliy Maletskiy, had written on Facebook, without giving an exact toll.
Ukrainian authorities said emergency teams were at the scene.
Kremenchuk is an industrial city in central Ukraine, with a population of 217,000 until Russia’s February 24 invasion. It is the site of the country’s largest oil refinery.
At the crucial Group of Seven or G7 summit in Germany, Zelensky on Monday urged world powers to do their utmost to help end Russia’s invasion by the end of the year. Notably, G7 leaders have planned new sanctions and vowed to support Kyiv against Moscow “as long as it takes.”
(Manas Dasgupta)