White House backs investigation into Ukraine train station attack

The White House earlier called the images from the train station “terrible and sad”.

The United States will continue to support Ukraine against Russian aggression, White House spokeswoman Kate Beddingfield said in an interview for CNN.

At least 50 people were killed and dozens were injured by a missile hit at a train station in eastern Ukraine, packed with women, children and elderly people trying to escape war, Ukrainian authorities said. Among the victims, 5 were children.

Officials said many of the wounded were missing limbs and were operating after the attack on the town of Kramatorski.

Thousands of people were at the train station when they hit missiles.

The United States believes Russia used a short-range ballistic missile action for the attack, a senior US defence official said. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said the Pentagon believes Russian forces used an SS-21 Scarab missile, but that the motive of the attack was not clear.

The SS-21 is the name used by the NATO military alliance for a kind of missile known as Tochka in the former Soviet states.

The United States is still analyzing the attack and it is not clear whether crushed ammunition was used, the American official said.

“We do not believe the denial of responsibility by Russians”, the official said. The Russian Defence Ministry was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying the missiles reportedly hitting the station were used only by the Ukrainian Army and that Kramatosrski was not the target of the Russian armed forces.

Ukrainian President Volodyr Zelenskiy said the attack on civilians was deliberate and blamed Russia for losing lives.

Unhuman Russians are not changing their methods. Without the strength or courage to confront us in the field of battle, they are cynically destroying the civilian population”, the president said on social networks.

This is a bad without borders. And if he doesn't get punished, then he'll never stop. ”

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and British Defence Minister Ben Wallace condemned the attack.

The Ukrainian Attorney General's Office said that around 4,000 civilians were in and around the station, most of them women and children who were responding to calls to leave the area before the Russian forces arrived.

“People were simply leaving for evacuation,” said General Prosecutor Iryna Venedicova during a visit to Buka, where journalists and residents returned after the Russian forces left found bodies of dead on the street and in mass cemetery.

Venice spoke as workers pulled the corpses out of a mass grave near a church.

None of the dead were Russian, she said. The attorney general is investigating deaths as possible war crimes.