The UN denounced the attack on the Kramatorsk station: “Those responsible must be held accountable”

The UN considered this Friday “completely unacceptable” the attack on the station in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, in the east of the country, which left dozens of people killed and injured among civilians waiting to be evacuated.

The organization's spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told reporters that the United Nations condemns this and other attacks against civilian populations and infrastructure that are taking place in the context of this conflict.

“These are serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law for which those responsible must be held accountable,” Dujarric stressed.

The United Nations reminded the parties to the war that they are obliged to protect civilians and urged the agreement of humanitarian truces to facilitate the evacuation of the population caught in the fighting in various areas of Ukraine and to bring assistance to those locations.

Ukrainian authorities have held Russia accountable and point out that at least 50 people, including five children, have died in the attack on Kramatorsk station, which took place when people were waiting to be evacuated.

Meanwhile, both the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and the Kremlin claimed nothing to do with the attack and held the Ukrainian army responsible for launching the missiles.

From the Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine, thousands of civilians are fleeing for fear of an imminent Russian offensive.

The missile fell at around 10:30 AM (07H30 GMT), an hour at which hundreds have been coming to the station for days to wait for a train to take them out by Kramatorsk, the capital of the part of the Donbas region that is still under Ukrainian control.

The balance could be greater, in what is already the most lethal attack since the conflict began six weeks ago.

Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky called the act “boundless evil” by Russia and reported that 300 people were injured.

A journalist from the AFP agency saw the grouped bodies of at least 30 people, who were loaded onto a military truck.

According to Oleksander Kamyshin, head of the Ukrainian railway company Ukrzaliznytsia, it was “a deliberate attack”.

In front of the station you could see the twisted remains of the missile, on which you could read (in white letters and in Russian) the inscription: “ For our children.” The phrase, which sounds like revenge, is sometimes used by pro-Russian separatists to refer to their children killed in the Donbas war, which began in 2014.

“It was a Toshka missile, a cluster bomb,” a police officer at the scene told AFP. “It explodes on several sides, on a surface the size of a football field,” he explained.

According to the blood on the ground and testimonies, the victims were gunned down in several places in the station, on the main platform next door and on the esplanade in front of the building.

The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, condemned the attack on the train station on Twitter. “This is a new attempt to close the evacuation routes for those fleeing this unjustified war and causing human suffering,” he denounced.

(With information from EFE and AFP)

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