KRAMATORSK, Ukraine -- At least 12 civilians were killed and dozens of others wounded in a rocket attack on the Kiev-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday, regional authorities reported.
The attack happened midday and as residents here returned to offices from lunch. At a café where Mashable was dining, about one mile away from the scene of the attack, the rumbling of a series of violent explosions shook its very foundation, and sent a dozen patrons screaming out the door and under their tables.
The Donetsk regional government reported 10 people were killed, including five civilians and five soldiers on a sprawling military base at the nearby airfield, when the barrage of rockets exploded across the city. Two more people died later in the hospital.
Additionally, 64 people, including two children and 29 soldiers, suffered injuries of varying degrees of severity.
Kramatorsk has been under Kiev’s control since last July, when the rebels retreated to the regional capital of Donetsk to consolidate their forces. Tuesday’s rocket attack marks the first violent incident since the separatists’ withdraw. It shocked the hell out of residents, who screamed and scurried to covered areas as the deadly rockets rained down on the city.
Afterward, they emerged to assess the damage, sweeping shattered glass from the streets and boarding up broken windows.
Lyudmila, 15, broke into tears at the sight of a middle-aged woman’s lifeless body, her face covered in blood, laying flat on her back in a residential courtyard some 50 feet from a large rocket shell wedged deep inside the earth.
“When will it stop?” Lyudmila, who declined to give her last name, shouted as three female friends comforted her. She did not know the woman, she said, but “it could have been any of us. We are safe nowhere!”
Addressing the Ukrainian parliament shortly after, President Petro Poroshenko blamed the separatists for the deadly shelling. The regional administration said the powerful "Tornado" rockets had been fired from the rebel-held Horlivka area about 35 miles southeast of Kramatorsk.
After examining half a dozen impact craters, Mashable also concluded the rockets had come from a south/southeasterly direction. The long-range Tornado rockets have a range of over 50 miles, meaning they could very well have been fired from the Horlivka area.
But the separatists pointed the finger right back at Kiev, saying the attack was carried out by Ukraine's military to "discredit" its militia.
At the scene, Mashable counted six large rocket craters in the area, while several residents said they had counted more than a dozen rocket craters, as well as several smaller impacts, possibly caused by cluster munitions.
Most countries have banned the use of deadly cluster munitions. However, Ukraine and Russia, which has been supplying the rebels with arms, did not sign an international treaty that prohibits the use, transfer and stockpile of cluster bombs.
Human Rights Watch has found extensive evidence showing that both sides are guilty of using the controversial weapons over the course of this 10-month-long war that has killed more than 5,000 people.
Cluster munitions are packed inside rocket containers that open up after being fired and disperse the submunitions, which are designed to explode when they hit the ground.
The attack comes amid an offensive by Russian-backed separatists to capture more land, and a concerted diplomatic push by the West to agree on a cease-fire and a peace plan to bring the war to an end.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande are set to meet with Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin, in Minsk, Belarus on Wednesday in the latest round of talks.