Death toll climbs to 52 in Ukraine train station missile hit

A missile hit a train station in eastern Ukraine on Friday, killing at least 52 and wounding dozens more in an attack on a crowd of mostly women and children trying to flee a looming Russian offensive.

The international community has decried the attack.

Photos from the station in Kramatorsk showed the dead covered with tarps, and the remnants of a rocket painted with the words “For the children,” which in Russian implied that children were being avenged in the strike, though the exact reason remained unclear.

After failing to take Kyiv, Russian forces have now set their sights on the Donbas, the mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years and control some areas.

The train station hit is in Ukrainian government-controlled territory in the Donbas, but Russia's Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack. So did the region's Moscow-backed separatists.

Western experts refuted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov's assertion that Russian forces “do not use” that type of missile.

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