Ukraine explosion kills at least 51 people gathered for wake

Ukrainian officials said a Russian strike killed at least 51 people in a small village with no obvious military or industrial target nearby.

They came to mourn the dead, but in a split-second of thunder and flying debris, more than 50 people gathered for a wake were themselves killed Thursday when A giant explosion ripped through a store in a small Ukrainian village.

It was one of the greatest losses of civilian life since the start of the war. Among the dead was a 6-year-old child, according to the head of the local military administration.

Ukrainian officials blamed a Russian military strike in the village of Hroza , in the northeast of Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced it as "a blatantly brutal Russian crime."

Ukraine's Interior Ministry said initial evidence indicated the store had been hit by an Iskander missile, which Russia used against Ukraine during the war.

The small enclave had no obvious military or industrial targets nearby .

“Almost half the village was killed by a single strike,” said Dmytro Chubenko, a local official.

Facing a barely recognizable debris field where a community gathering once took place, rescuers wearing hard hats and fluorescent gear prepared for gruesome finds in Hroza on Thursday as they set out to digging with shovels and other tools.

Horrific images quickly spread from the small village to screens around the world. In some cases, more than a dozen corpses lay on the ground, face down, on their sides, or in one case stacked on top of each other. The clothes were charred and torn; the limbs appeared mutilated. In one photo, a woman in a flannel shirt stood over the bodies and looked down, putting her hand to her mouth.

At least 51 people died and six others were injured. authorities said. The dead were covered as best they could, until the body bags arrived.

By the end of the day, Hroza had joined the grim list of names engraved in the list of devastated people. Ukrainian cities and towns, including Kramatorsk, where more than 50 civilians died when Russian forces bombed a train station in April 2022, and Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, where at least 500 civilians were killed each month in Russian rocket and missile attacks. earlier.

ImageWhile the Ukrainian army and police searched for victims of the strike , a woman was comforted by her husband as they waited for news from a loved one.Credit...David Guttenfelder for the New York Times

The disaster s t came on the same day that Mr Zelensky embarked on a trip aimed at boosting Western support for Ukraine. He attended an EU summit in Spain aimed at boosting cooperation across the continent as concern grew over waning support for his country as it faces another winter of Russian aggression.

Asked If he is worried about a possible reduction in US military aid, Mr Zelensky said it was “too late for us to worry”. But in a speech at the summit, he described the meetings he had last month with President Biden and members of Congress as positive.

" I have confidence in America," Zelensky said.

Speaking Thursday at a Kremlin-affiliated research institute in the Moscow region black Sea...