Russian shelling injured at least 57 others visiting a popular restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city.
Three teenagers were among 11 people killed in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk after a Russian missile hit a popular restaurant on Tuesday night.
Included in the dead were 14-year-old twin sisters Yuliya and Anna Aksenchenko.
At least 57 others were injured, including Colombian nationals and a leading Ukrainian writer.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia deserved only “defeat and a tribunal” for carrying out the attack.
Emergency services said on Wednesday that the search and rescue efforts are still ongoing.
Kramatorsk, an eastern city in the Donetsk region, is under Ukrainian control but it is close to Russian-occupied parts of the country.
“Russian missiles stopped the beating of the hearts of two angels,” Kramatorsk city council’s education department said in a statement.
Image source, Telegram
Sergio Jaramillo Caro, a former Colombia peace negotiator, told the BBC he was sitting in the restaurant when it came under attack on Tuesday night, but he only suffered minor injuries.
However, a leading Ukrainian writer sitting with them – whose identity is not being disclosed – is in a critical condition and “fighting for her life”.
“Please pray for her”, Mr Jaramillo Caro said.
Valentyna, a Kramatorsk resident who owns a cafe near the site spoke of the damage following the attack. “Everything has been blown out there,” she told Reuters news agency, adding that “none of the glass, windows or doors are left”.
The Kremlin claimed again to only carry out strikes on military targets, and Russia’s defence ministry claimed it had destroyed a “temporary deployment of [Ukrainian] commanders” in Kramatorsk, without elaborating further.
An advisor to Ukraine’s defence ministry, Yuri Sak, told the BBC that Ukraine’s air defences are currently “insufficient to cover the full territory of Ukraine”.
Ukraine continues to ask its allies to provide them with modern fighter jets to help it defend itself from Russian strikes.
Last month, the US said it would support the war-torn country by allowing Western allies to supply American-made F16s, and by training Ukrainian pilots to use the jets.
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