Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he wants a tough global response after a missile hit a train station packed with civilians trying to escape an impending Russian offensive, killing at least 52 people.
Meanwhile, the country's deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said on Saturday that
10 humanitarian corridors
had been agreed to evacuate civilians from besieged cities in the south.
Zelenskyy's voice rose with fury during his speech late on Friday, when he said the attack on the Kramatorsk train station in eastern Ukraine amounted to another
war crime
that should be considered by an international tribunal. .
Five children are among the dead
and dozens of people were seriously injured, according to Ukrainian authorities.
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"All global efforts will be directed at establishing every minute of who did what, who gave what orders, where the missile came from, who transported it, who gave the order, and how this attack was arranged," the president warned.
"There were no military there": Zelenskyy regrets Russian attack on a train station that killed dozens of civilians
April 8, 202201:00
The country's deputy prime minister said in a message on her Telegram channel on Saturday that routes out of the port cities of Mariupol and Berdyansk, as well as Melitopol and other areas in southern and eastern Ukraine, would be opened.
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His announcement came after international condemnation of Russia for the attack on the train station.
Moscow denied carrying out the attack, a claim that Pentagon press secretary John Kirby called "unconvincing" on Friday.
Separately, the British Defense Ministry said at an intelligence briefing on Saturday
that Russia was expected to increase its air activity in southern and eastern Ukraine.
However, he added that Russia's attempts to create a land corridor between Crimea and eastern Ukraine had "been thwarted."
Ukraine's state-owned railway company said in a statement that residents of the disputed Donbas region, where Russia has refocused its forces after failing to take the capital kyiv, could flee through other train stations on Saturday.
The Kramatorsk train station in eastern Ukraine after a missile attack that killed dozens of people on April 8, 2022. FADEL SENNA / AFP via Getty Images
More bodies discovered in Bucha
The attack in Kramatorsk came as workers from other parts of the country unearthed at least 67 bodies from a mass grave near a church in Bucha, a city near kyiv, where graphic evidence of dozens of killings has emerged following the withdrawal of forces. russians
Russia has falsely claimed that Bucha's scenes were staged.
The mayor, Anatoliy Fedoruk, has stated that investigators have found
at least three places where mass shootings of civilians have taken place
and that they continue to find bodies in city yards, parks and squares, 90% of whom were victims who had received shots.
Although the Kramatorsk railway station is in Ukrainian government-controlled territory in the Donbas, the separatists, who work closely with Russian troops, blamed Ukraine for the attack.
As the attack on a train station shocks the world, a mayor denounces a massacre worse than Bucha's
April 8, 202202:10
Western experts, however, rejected Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov's claim that Russian forces "do not use" Tochka-U missiles, the type that hit the station.
A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, said Russian forces have used the missile.
And that, given the location and impact of the attack, it is likely to be from Russia.
Justin Bronk, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London, pointed to other occasions when Russian authorities have tried to deflect blame by claiming that their forces are no longer using an older weapon "to muddy the waters and try to create doubt."
He suggested that Russia specifically chose the Tochka-U because Ukraine also has it.
At least
176 children have been killed
in Ukraine since the start of the invasion, while another 324 have been injured, the country's Attorney General's Office said on Saturday.
Ukrainian authorities have warned that they expect to find evidence of more mass killings once they reach the southern port city of Mariupol, which is also in the Donbas and has been blockaded by the Russians.