\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n The mourners for a fallen Ukrainian soldier had gathered at a cafe in the village of Groza, in the Kharkiv region.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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 February 24, 2022.\n<\/p>\n
\n AFP journalists at the scene of the aftermath saw blackened and dismembered bodies spread out on the ground opposite the ruins of the cafe.\n<\/p>\n
\n Police and soldiers loaded white body bags of unidentifiable bodies onto trucks that would take them to Kharkiv for DNA testing.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"My son was just found without a head, without arms, without legs, without anything. They recognised him from his documents,\" Volodymyr Mukhovaty, 70, told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n His wife and daughter-in-law were also attending the wake, he said, acknowledging he had \"little hope\" of finding them alive.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I lived with my wife for 48 years,\" he said. \"I will not last long alone.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - Six-year-old victim -\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was reburied in Groza on Thursday morning.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n Klymenko said initial evidence showed an Iskander missile had been used.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was attending a European summit in Spain, said he had no doubts that the strike had been deliberate.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The Russian military could not fail to know where they were hitting,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It was not a blind strike.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Zelensky also said he had secured agreements from several countries to provide Kyiv with more air defence systems and artillery,\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain -- thank you!\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Depravity' -\n<\/p>\n
\n German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had announced that Berlin would supply Kyiv with a new Patriot air-defence system, and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock later posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Germany would \"do everything for #Ukraine to protect itself from Putin's missile terror\".\n<\/p>\n
\n White House spokeswoman Karin Jean-Pierre meanwhile condemned the \"horrifying\" strike, saying \"this is why we're doing everything that we can to help Ukraine\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Denise Brown, the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, also called the attack \"absolutely horrifying\", stressing that \"intentionally directing an attack against civilians or civilian objects is a war crime\".\n<\/p>\n
\n And British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the strike \"demonstrated the depths of depravity Russian forces are willing to sink to\", according to a spokesperson.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hours after the attack, Moscow said it had destroyed eight Ukrainian drones in western Russia's Kursk and Belgorod regions, but made no mention of any casualties.\n<\/p>\n
\n And Russia continued its attacks overnight in Ukraine, targeting port infrastructure in the southern Izmail district, on the Danube river near the Romanian border.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukraine's air force said Friday it had downed 25 of 33 Russian attack drones in six regions, including Odesa, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Dnipro.\n<\/p>\n
\n It did not specify the targets the eight other drones may have struck.\n<\/p>\n
\n A child was killed and 16 others were wounded in a Russian strike in Kharkiv, the region's governor said.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'No military logic' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Large swathes of the Kharkiv region, including Groza, were captured by Russian forces in the early days of their invasion launched in February last year.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukrainian forces recaptured much of the border territory during a lightning offensive late last year, but the area has continued to come under regular shelling.\n<\/p>\n
\n Zelensky's advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said the Groza attack had \"no military logic\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"This is a reminder to anyone who is willing to smile and shake hands with war criminal (Russian President Vladimir) Putin at international conferences,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Putin's Russia is a true evil\".\n<\/p>\n
\n bur-brw-nl\/ach\n<\/p>\n
\n X<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-122791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n