GROZA, Ukraine (AFP) — A Russian strike killed at least 51 people gathered for a wake in northeastern Ukraine Thursday, provoking outrage from Western leaders for what the UN warned could be a war crime.
The mourners for a fallen Ukrainian soldier had gathered at a cafe in the village of Groza, in the Kharkiv region.
People who had been in a shop in the same building were also killed in the attack on the small village, which had a population of 330 people.
A spokeswoman for the regional assembly, quoted by Ukrainian media, said it was the single deadliest attack since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022.
AFP journalists at the scene of the aftermath saw blackened and dismembered bodies spread out on the ground opposite the ruins of the cafe.
Police and soldiers loaded white body bags of unidentifiable bodies onto trucks that would take them to Kharkiv for DNA testing.
“My son was just found without a head, without arms, without legs, without anything. They recognized him from his documents,” Volodymyr Mukhovaty, 70, told AFP.
His wife and daughter-in-law were also attending the wake, he said, acknowledging he had “little hope” of finding them alive.
“I lived with my wife for 48 years,” he said. “I will not last long alone.”
A six-year-old child was also among the victims, said Interior Minister Igor Klymenko, who added that a total of 60 people had been attending the memorial service.
The soldier, whose wake it was, had been killed a month after Russia invaded. He had been buried in the southern city of Dnipro — away from his home village, then under Russian occupation.
He was reburied in Groza on Thursday morning. His wife and son, also a soldier, were both killed in the strike, a spokesman for the regional prosecutor’s office was quoted as saying by the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
Klymenko said initial evidence showed an Iskander missile had been used.