Russian airstrike in Kramatorsk kills 4, including 16-year-old boy
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Russia carried out on airstrike on the city of Kramatorsk in Donetsk Oblast on April 3, killing four civilians and injuring four others, regional authorities reported.
One of the victims killed in the attack was a 16-year-old boy.
Russian forces dropped four FAB-250 aerial bombs with cluster munitions on the city between 6:17 and 6:25 p.m. local time, the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office reported.
The airstrike killed a husband and wife, ages 71 and 68, as well as a 45-year-old woman. The 16-year-old boy died in the hospital from severe injuries sustained in the attack.
Four other civilians were injured, Donetsk Oblast Governor Vadim Filashkin said. The bombing also damaged multiple houses and at least two administrative buildings.
"The Russians are destroying everything they can reach," Filashkin said.
The local prosecutor is investigating the attack as a possible war crime.
Cluster munitions are types of weapons that scatter small explosive bomblets across a large impact area. They are banned under international law by more than 100 countries due to their indiscriminate nature and the long-term threat they pose to civilians, especially when unexploded submunitions remain hidden in residential areas.
While Ukraine has used cluster munitions provided by the United States against Russian forces on the battlefield since 2022, Russia uses them far more often and strikes civilian areas, experts have told the Kyiv Independent.
The airstrike on Kramatorsk followed a mass daytime drone attack that targeted multiple regions in Ukraine, killing at least four and injuring over 30. Russia launched more than 400 drones at Kirovohrad, Vinnytsia, Sumy, Cherkasy, Poltava, Zhytomyr, and Kyiv oblasts.
While mass daytime attacks are relatively uncommon, Russian strikes on front-line Kramatorsk are not. The April 3 attack marks the second time this week that Russian bombs have killed a teenager in the city.
A Russian glide bomb hit Kramatorsk on March 29, killing three people, including a 13-year-old boy. Thirteen other victims were wounded.
Located less than 20 kilometers from the nearest Russian positions in eastern Donetsk Oblast, where the fiercest fighting rages, Kramatorsk has endured intensified Russian glide bomb and drone attacks over the past weeks.
The city, once home to about 200,000 people before the full-scale war, has become the de facto regional capital after Russia occupied Donetsk in 2014.
Heavily fortified and home to a key intersection of railway and highways, Kramatorsk remains a strategic logistical hub at the center of Russia's aims to overrun the rest of Ukrainian-held Donetsk Oblast.
