A Russian missile strike in Ukraine has killed a child thought to be 14 or 15, officials have said.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the young teenager is among four others who have died and 42 who were injured in the attack.
One of those who have been wounded is believed to be a very young child.
Today has reportedly seen Moscow send two rockets into Ukraine – hitting a civilian shopping centre which housed restaurants and cafes in the city of Kramatorsk and the nearby village Bilenke.
Journalists have said a pizza restaurant destroyed in the violence was a popular dining choice for war correspondents in the area.
Reporter Arnaud De Decker posted a photo of his pizza and beer from inside the venue, saying it was taken just 20 minutes before the explosions.
He said ‘people were still screaming underneath the rubble’ an hour after the rockets had hit.
Emergency services are currently disassembling the floor slabs of the restaurant to search for victims still stuck.
Governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, told Ukrainian TV: ‘This is the city centre. These were public eating places crowded with civilians.’
Iuliia Mendel, the spokesperson for President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted a clip of a building almost completely destroyed with smoke billowing from the top of it.
Emergency services are reportedly at the scene helping the wounded and searching for dead bodies.
Multiple other sources have posted about the alleged attack, believed to have been carried out with two S-300 missiles.
Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska said: ‘Terrorists from RF attack civilians again. Kramatorsk, missile attack on a restaurant in the city center. Crowded place, evening — enemy do not want normal life in Ukraine.
‘There are a lot of wounded. It is painful. Evil must be punished.’
She also highlighted that today’s strike has happened on the anniversary of a deadly attack on Amstor mall in the centre of Kremenchuk.
More than 20 people were killed and 59 injured in the tragedy which took place exactly a year ago.
More than 1,000 people were inside the building when it was hit by a Russian Soviet-era Kh-22 missile carrying over 900 kilograms of explosives, Mr Zelensky said at the time.
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