New Delhi: About 16 people lost their lives and 56 were wounded after a Russian missile strike on a shopping mall in the central city of Kremenchuk, the head of Ukraine's emergency services said early Tuesday, according to an AFP report. The Ukraine defence ministry said that the strike was timed so that a maximum number of victims are hit during the mall's busiest hours. According to the report, the Ukrainian air force said that Kh-22 anti-ship missiles were fired from Tu-22 bombers from the region of Kursk in western Russia.
"As of now, we know of 16 dead and 59 wounded, 25 of them hospitalised. The information is being updated," Sergiy Kruk said on Telegram, AFP reported.
He said the main tasks were "rescue works, debris removal, and elimination of fires" following Monday's strike on the shopping centre.
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said "over a thousand civilians" were in the mall when the missiles struck the city, which had a pre-war population of 220,000 people.
"The mall is on fire, rescuers are fighting the fire. The number of victims is impossible to imagine," Zelenskyy wrote on Facebook. He shared a video which showed the mall engulfed in flames with dozens of rescuers and a fire truck outside.
There were also images shared by the Emergency services showing the smouldering remains of the building, with firefighters and rescuers trying to clear the debris.
"The missile fire on Kremenchuk struck a very busy area which had no link to the hostilities," the city's mayor Vitali Maletsky wrote on Facebook.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Kyiv's allies to supply more heavy weapons and also impose new sanctions on Russia.
"Russia is a disgrace to humanity and it must face consequences," he wrote on Twitter.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter, "the world is horrified by Russia's missile strike today, which hit a crowded Ukrainian shopping mall -- the latest in a string of atrocities".
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the attack demonstrated the "depths of cruelty and barbarism" of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.