A Russian airstrike struck a bustling shopping mall in Kremenchuk, central Ukraine on Monday, setting the building ablaze and prompting concerns of mass casualties.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said up to 1,000 people were in the mall when it was hit by missiles, adding: “The number of victims is impossible to imagine.”
Later on Monday, the head of the Poltava region military administration, Dmytro Lunin, said 10 people had died in the attack. Another person later died at hospital, taking the death toll to 11, Ukraine’s State Emergency Services said.
At least 58 people were injured, they said.
Video from the scene showed heavy smoke billowing from the building, which was engulfed by fire. The mall measures about one hectare — roughly the size of two football fields — and the strike occurred around 4 p.m. local time, Solohub said.
“We don’t know how many more people might be under the rubble,” said Volodymyr Solohub, a regional official in the Poltava Oblast local administration.
The attack targeted a site in central Ukraine far away from the epicenter of Russia’s war, which has recently been focused in the east of the country.
It came as G7 leaders met at a summit in Germany that was mostly geared toward coordinating the Western response to Russia’s invasion.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said from that meeting that the attack showed the “depths of cruelty and barbarism” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the UK’s PA news agency reported.