IN PICS | Russian missile strike hits crowded shopping mall in Ukraine

Russian missile strike killed at least 18 and wounded scores in what Ukraine's president called “one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history.”

Russian long-range bombers struck a crowded shopping mall in Ukraine's central city of Kremenchuk with a missile on June 27, 2022. (Photo | AP) 

Giant plumes of black smoke, dust and orange flames seen emanating from the wreckage, with emergency crews rushing in to search amid broken metal and concrete for victims and put out fires. (Photo | AP)

Onlookers watch in distress at the sight of how an everyday activity such as shopping could turn into a horror. (Photo | AP)

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said more than 1,000 afternoon shoppers and workers were inside the mall in the city of Kremenchuk. (Photo | AP)

Ukraine's emergency services reported that at least 18 people were dead and about 60 wounded. (Photo | AP)

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Iryna Venediktova, who is leading investigations into possible war crimes, said the missile attack was one of Russia’s “crimes against humanity,” noting that the Russian military has been “systematically shelling civilian infrastructure with the aim to scare people, to kill people, to bring terror to our cities and villages.” (Photo | AP)

The Russian strike echoed earlier attacks that caused a large number of civilian casualties — such as one in March on a Mariupol theater where many civilians had holed up, killing an estimated 600, and another in April on a train station in eastern Kramatorsk that killed at least 59 people. (Photo | AP)

A woman lays a toy at a shopping center burned after a rocket attack in Kremenchuk, Ukraine. (Photo |AP)

A police officer inspects a fragment of a Russian rocket stuck in a tree trunk about 300 meter from the epicentre of the Russian deadly rocket attack at a shopping centre in Kremenchuk. (Photo | AP)

A police officer inspects a fragment of a Russian rocket stuck in a tree trunk about 300 meter from the epicentre of the Russian deadly rocket attack at a shopping centre in Kremenchuk. (Photo | AP)