Ukraine urges civilians to flee as death toll rises

A man rides a bicycle as a tail of a missile sticks out in the city of Chuhuiv, Ukraine. Pic/AP

Ukraine on Saturday called on civilians in the eastern Luhansk region to flee from Russian shelling, after officials said at least 52 civilians trying to evacuate by rail from a neighbouring region were killed in a missile attack. Air raid sirens rang out across much of the east of Ukraine on Saturday morning, officials said, as Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai urged people in a televised address to leave as Russia was amassing forces for an offensive.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for a "firm global response" to Friday's missile attack on a train station crowded with women, children and the elderly in Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region. The city mayor estimated 4,000 people were gathered there at the time. Russia's defence ministry denied responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement, "The missiles that struck the station were used only by Ukraine's military and that Russia's armed forces had no targets assigned in Kramatorsk on Friday. All statements by the Ukrainian authorities on the attack were provocations," it said.

Russia's incursion, which has already lasted over six weeks, has forced more than four million people to flee abroad, killed or injured thousands, left a quarter of the population homeless, and turned cities into rubble. The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said Moscow was preparing for a thrust to try to gain full control of the eastern Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk partly held by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014, after withdrawing forces from the Kyiv region. The British Defence Ministry said in a briefing it expected air attacks to increase in the south and east as Russia seeks to establish a land bridge between Crimea - which Moscow annexed in 2014 - and the Donbas, but Ukrainian forces were thwarting the advance.

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