At least eight people have died and another 56 have been injured as a result of a missile launched on Tuesday night against a popular restaurant in the center of Kramatorsk, a city in the east of the country. According to Ukrainian police, Russia fired two surface-to-air missiles at this city, which had a population of 150,000 before the war.
One of the missiles has destroyed the Ria Pizza restaurant, a popular establishment in the center of the city frequented by journalists and the military. Among the dead are three children, have indicated the emergency services of the Ukrainian state, which is looking for survivors among the rubble.
Among those who were in the restaurant at the time were Hector Faciolini Abad, a representative of Aguanta Ukraine, a South American movement in support of Ukraine; the politician Sergio Jaramillo and the journalist Catalina Gómez, who has published some of the best chronicles of this conflict for La Vanguardia. The three have been slightly injured while having dinner with the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who is in a coma in the hospital, with critical injuries to her skull.
This newspaper has been able to contact this morning with its special envoy in the conflict, Catalina Gómez, who has declared that she is well, but still shocked by what happened. Catalina Gómez is in the hospital with Victoria Amelina. Abad and Jaramillo were in eastern Ukraine to "express to the Ukrainian people the solidarity of Latin America against barbarism and the illegal Russian invasion."
Hector Abad is a renowned journalist, author of "El olvido que seremos", a 2020 literary success. Jaramillo is a Colombian politician, and one of the main negotiators of the peace agreement signed in 2016 with the FARC guerrillas.
Located to the west of Bakhmut, a city devastated by the longest battle of the conflict, Kramatorsk has been the target of Russian bombing several times. The deadliest was that of the Kramatorsk station in April 2022, which left 61 dead and more than 160 injured. Kramatorsk has been the de facto regional capital of the eastern part of the country since the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk were captured by pro-Russian separatists in 2014.
