ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine – No less than 23 individuals were killed and 28 injured in a Russian rocket strike that hit an escort of regular citizen vehicles on the edges of the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, the territorial lead representative said.

A Reuters witness saw bodies lying on the ground or still in vehicles at the city’s rambling Orekhovo vehicle market. A rocket had left a pit in the ground close to two lines of vehicles.

“Up until this point, 23 dead and 28 injured. All regular people,” Oleksandr Starukh, the Zaporizhzhia provincial lead representative, composed on the Wire informing application.

Police and crisis laborers had raced to the location of the rocket strike, the effect of which tossed pieces of soil up high and showered the vehicles with shrapnel. The windows of the vehicles – generally vehicles and three vans – were smothered.

The vehicles were loaded with the inhabitants’ effects, covers and bags. A body inclined from the driver’s seat into the front seat of a yellow vehicle, his left hand actually gripping the controlling wheel.

Plastic sheets were hung over the bodies of a lady and young fellow in a green vehicle in the following vehicle in front. A dead feline lay close to the young fellow in the back seat.

Two bodies lay in a white smaller than normal van before that vehicle, its windows blown and the sides pitted with shrapnel.

A lady who gave her name as Nataliya said she and her significant other had been visiting their youngsters in Zaporizhzhia.

“We were getting back to my mom who is 90 years of age. We have been saved. It’s a marvel,” she expressed, remaining with her better half next to their vehicle.

Russia, which attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what it calls a unique military activity, denies purposely focusing on regular people however its assaults have crushed Ukrainian towns and urban communities.