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Max Hunder and Anna Pruchnicka

Ten dead as missile strikes restaurant in Ukraine city

Rescue crews have combed through the shattered restaurant in Kramatorsk in search of casualties. (AP PHOTO)

Two more bodies, including a fourth child, have been pulled from the rubble of a building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, taking the death toll from a Russian missile strike to 10.

Police said at least 61 people were wounded in the attack on Tuesday evening when a missile slammed into a busy restaurant.

"As of now, rescuers have recovered the bodies of 10 people from the rubble," Veronika Bakhal, spokeswoman for the Donetsk region emergency services, told Ukrainian television.

Eight people had been rescued alive from the rubble and at least three more were believed to be trapped, she said.

Officials said two girls aged 14 and a girl aged 17 were among the dead.

"Rescuers pulled a boy's body from the rubble," mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday morning as search and rescue operations continued. 

He did not give the boy's age.

The restaurant building was reduced to a twisted web of metal beams.

"I ran here after the explosion because I rented a cafe here ... Everything has been blown out there," said Valentyna, a 64-year-old woman who declined to give her surname.

"None of the glass, windows or doors are left. 

"All I see is destruction, fear and horror. 

"This is the 21st century."

A second missile hit a village on the fringes of Kramatorsk, wounding five.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video message on Tuesday the attacks showed Russia "deserved only one thing as a consequence of what it has done - defeat and a tribunal".

Russia has frequently hit Ukrainian cities since its full-scale invasion in February 2022 but denies targeting civilians.

Kramatorsk lies west of the front lines in Donetsk province and is a likely objective in any westward advance by Russia.

The city has been a frequent target of Russian attacks, and a missile strike killed 63 people at a railway station in April 2022.

Earlier, Ukraine's government reprimanded Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko after criticism of city officials over the state of bomb shelters following the deaths of three people locked out on the street during a Russian air raid.

The government said it had also approved the dismissal of the heads of two Kyiv districts and two acting heads of districts.

Uncertainty about the Kyiv mayor's political future grew after Zelenskiy criticised officials in the capital over the June 1 incident, in which two women and a girl were killed by falling debris after rushing to a shelter and finding it shut.

Zelenskiy also ordered an audit of all bomb shelters in Kyiv after the incident, and said personnel changes would be made.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a government meeting the audit ordered by Zelenskiy had found 77 per cent of the shelters in Ukraine were fit for use, but many did not "meet any standards".

He said the situation was "unacceptable" in some places, and mentioned districts in the Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Zhytomyr and Kyiv regions as well as the city of Kyiv.

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