Kremenchuk, Ukraine – Ukrainian emergency service workers were still searching through the rubble Tuesday of a shopping mall hit by a Russian missile attack, hoping to locate survivors as the death toll rose to 18. Authorities said at least 36 other people were still missing. .
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Monday’s strike against the shopping mall in the central city of Kremenchuk a “terrorist attack,” and the country’s attorney general called the attack a “crime against humanity. “
While Russia claimed the mall was closed at the time of the attack, Zelenksyy said about 1,000 more people were inside when the missile went down. The president said it was an attack directed against Russia against innocent civilians.
CBS News correspondent Ramy Innocent at the scene Tuesday morning. He said the Amstor Mall had been reduced to a charred corpse of his former self.
As thick smoke swirled from construction Monday afternoon, police yelled at others to seek shelter as firefighters scrambled to extinguish the inferno and bystanders helped get patients into ambulances.
Soon, other people began gathering to go through lists posted on the walls, looking for the names of missing loved ones.
In hospital, Mykola Mykhailets, injured, said he saw “many wounded, burned, some covered in blood. “
His wife Ludmyla was also injured in the attack. Lying on a hospital bed next to her husband, she said the explosion threw her into the air.
“It’s scary,” he said. To the women who left the country with their young people, I would say not to come back. “
President Joe Biden and other G7 leaders were gathered in the German Alps when the missile went down. They called the attack “abominable” and pledged about $30 billion in new aid to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy has issued repeated and pressing requests for more modern weaponry for Ukrainian forces to protect the country opposing the Russian invasion, which has recently made gains in eastern Donbass.
Ukraine has requested, among other things, complex missile defense systems to shoot down incoming missiles such as the one that hit the Kremenchuk shopping mall.
The front line of the war, in Donbass, is just over a hundred miles east of the smoking ruins of the mall, and Ukrainians know it’s a matter of when, not if, Russian rockets will strike again.