KREMENCHUK, Ukraine — On Monday afternoon, Lyudmila Myhailets took her husband t

As emergency employees combed throughout the rubble of a destroyed buying groceries mall in central Ukraine on Tuesday morning, the dying toll from a Russian missile strike the day ahead of rose to 18, town’s mayor mentioned.

Fifty-nine other people remained wounded and every other 36 have been nonetheless lacking, Vitaliy Maletskiy, the mayor, wrote on Fb. Masses of other people were within the mall.

Ukraine’s best prosecutor, Irina Venediktova, arrived at the scene on Tuesday with a workforce of investigators to assemble proof about what she mentioned constituted each a “battle crime” beneath Ukrainian regulation and against the law in opposition to humanity.

About 60 other people had sought clinical lend a hand, the mayor mentioned. At a health center the place the wounded have been being handled, 5 other people have been in vital situation, consistent with the executive physician, Oksana Korlyakova.

The prosecutor denounced what she described because the “systematic shelling of civilian infrastructure: hospitals, kindergartens, shops as you spot right here.”

“I’m certain the Russians know rather well that they’re killing civilians,” Ms. Venediktova added. “For them it’s not information, however they do it over and over.”

Russia’s protection ministry stated in a observation on Tuesday that it had struck Kremenchuk with what it described as high-precision missiles. However it mentioned the mall were set ablaze by way of an explosion at its number one goal, which it mentioned used to be depots containing munitions for guns methods provided by way of america and Ecu nations.

The claims may just now not be independently verified, and Ukraine’s inside minister mentioned at a briefing for newshounds on Tuesday that “there is not any army object in a five-kilometer radius.”

In a small park subsequent to the buying groceries middle, a makeshift memorial of 16 vases stuffed with flora were arrange. Somber guests lit candles for the useless.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine mentioned in a night video cope with that the strike used to be intentional. “This isn’t an unintended hit — this can be a calculated Russian strike,” he mentioned.

This used to be the 6th and most threatening Russian missile strike on Kremenchuk, an business town that had a prewar inhabitants of 217,000. Even though some citizens have left, many displaced other people have additionally arrived from puts additional east that experience confronted heavy bombardment, similar to Kharkiv and Mariupol.

A number of the wounded in Monday’s strike used to be Yulia, 22, who had fled to Kremenchuk from Kharkiv along with her mom. They prior to now lived in Luhansk, a town that used to be occupied by way of Moscow-backed separatists in 2014.

Yulia and her mom, Larisa, had fled to Kharkiv after the sooner combating, after which two months in the past fled once more to Kremenchuk as a result of heavy shelling in Kharkiv. She had discovered a task promoting cell phones within the buying groceries middle.

“We was hoping we might be secure right here,” mentioned Larisa, who didn’t really feel relaxed sharing her remaining title. “It is a deep trauma for my soul.”

Within the hours after the strike, pro-Moscow information shops and social media channels have been fast to push aside the assault as staged by way of the Ukrainians.

“I need the arena to grasp that this isn’t pretend,” Larisa mentioned. “Folks suffered, and it is vitally frightening.”

Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Tblisi, Georgia.