More than 30 people were killed and over 100 were wounded Friday in a Russian rocket attack on a railroad station in eastern Ukraine — where civilians were trying to evacuate to safer parts of the country, officials said.

“Two rockets hit Kramatorsk railway station,” Ukrainian Railways said in a statement.

“According to operational data, more than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded,” it added.

The railroad station was being used for the evacuation of civilians from areas under bombardment by Russian forces, according to Reuters, which said it could not independently confirm the deadly strike.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, said thousands of people had been at the station at the time of the attack.

“The ‘Rashists’ (‘Russian fascists’) knew very well where they were aiming and what they wanted: they wanted to sow panic and fear, they wanted to take as many civilians as possible,” he said.

Kyrylenko posted a graphic photograph online showing several bodies lying beside piles of suitcases and other luggage. Armed police wearing flak jackets stood beside them.

Another image showed emergency personnel fighting a fire as thick smoke rose into the air.

Russia did not immediately comment on the reported attack. Moscow has denied targeting civilians since the country launched its invasion on Feb. 24.
However, intercepted radio messages released Thursday appeared to catch Russian troops complaining about being vastly outnumbered — and being ordered to “f–king kill” civilians, according to Ukraine intelligence.

“Civilians, everyone, slay them all!” a Russian commander barked at his underlings during the brutal assault on Mariupol, according to a clip released Wednesday by the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU).

Ukrainian officials have warned that Russians have been regrouping for a new offensive — and that Moscow plans to seize as much territory as it can in the eastern part of Ukraine known as Donbas bordering Russia.  

Farther west toward the capital of Kyiv, more than 300 people have been reportedly killed by Russian forces in Bucha, 50 of whom were executed, Sky News reported. 

Moscow claimed the verified images of bodies in the town were staged by the Ukrainian government to derail peace negotiations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a similar situation to Bucha was unfolding about 15 miles away in Borodyanka.

“The work on dismantling the debris in Borodyanka began… It’s much worse there,” he said in his nightly presidential address. 

“And what will happen when the world learns the whole truth about what the Russian military did in Mariupol? There, on almost every street, is what the world saw in Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv region after the withdrawal of Russian troops,” Zelensky continued.

“The same cruelty. The same heinous crimes,” he added.

Russian forces pulled out of Bucha last week, under pressure from Ukrainian forces, but relief at their departure soon turned to grief as the numbers of deaths became apparent.

The war, which has now entered its seventh week, has seen millions flee Ukraine, thousands killed and injured, and once-thriving cities reduced to rubble.

Moscow said one of its aims is to “liberate” largely Russian-speaking places such as the southern port of Mariupol from the threat of genocide by Ukrainian nationalists, who it says have used civilians as human shields.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, speaking in his first broadcast interview with British media since the invasion started, told Sky News the images coming out of Bucha were a “well-staged insinuation, nothing else”.

Dmitry Peskov said “we’re living in days of fakes and lies” and that the verified images of dead civilians were a “bold fake”.

“We deny the Russian military can have something in common with these atrocities and that dead bodies were shown on the streets of Bucha,” he told Sky News.