Two Russian ballistic missiles slammed into a bustling city center in northeastern Ukraine on Sunday morning, officials said, killing at least 32 people in what appeared to be the deadliest attack against civilians this year, New York Times reported.
Two children were among the dead and at least 99 people were wounded.
The midmorning strike on the city of Sumy was the latest in a string of intensifying Russian attacks on urban centers in Ukraine that have inflicted heavy civilian casualties despite the Trump administration’s push for a cease-fire.
Officials said the city center was crowded with civilians out enjoying Palm Sunday, a Christian celebration popular in Ukraine, when the missiles hit. Lively streets were turned into scenes of carnage: Video of the aftermath showed mangled and bloodied bodies laying motionless, burning cars and debris covering the road as screams and sirens wailed in the background.
“People were harmed right in the middle of the street — in cars, on public transport, in their homes,” the interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, lamented on social media.
According to Ukraine’s emergency services, the strikes came just over a week after a Russian missile hit near a playground in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, killing 19 people, including nine children. In that attack and in the one on Sunday, according to Ukrainian officials, Russia used ballistic missiles, which travel at high speeds, making them very difficult to shoot down.
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