Russian forces killed 20 people, including 10 children, in a close-range attack on a six-car convoy of civilian vehicles fleeing southeastern Ukraine Saturday, according to reports.
The strike followed another missile hit on a different convoy in Zaporizhzhia province on Friday, which resulted in the deaths of 30 civilians.
Oleh Vasylovych Synyehubov, the Ukraine governor of Kharkiv Oblast, said that the 20 civilians were killed when the Russians shelled the convoy in Kupyansk, an important railroad junction in the province.
Photos showed wreckage of vehicles and civilian bodies found at the site, according to a report from the Security Service of Ukraine posted on the Telegram app Saturday.
The report said the convoy was traveling in a so-called “grey zone” between occupied Svatov in the Luhansk region and liberated Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region.
“A brutal attack on civilians was carried out by a sabotage and reconnaissance group of the occupiers – they shot six old cars and one Gazelle truck at close range with small arms,” said Vasyl Malyuk, acting head of Ukraine’s Security Service.
“The enemy once again proved that his goal is the destruction of all Ukrainians, regardless of age and gender,” Malyuk continued. “The occupiers are defeated on the battlefield and out of desperation respond to them by killing civilians.”
The Security Service said it is investigating the attack as a war crime.
