Russian missile strike destroys Kramatorsk apartment block

At least one missile hit central Kramatorsk at around 10pm on Wednesday night, completely demolishing a block of flats and devastating neighbouring buildings.

The missile might have had a specific target - perhaps one of the government and administrative buildings in the streets in Kramatorsk's small grid-pattern centre.

Instead, it hit a yellow-painted, four-storey block of flats. One witness said three families lived in the building.

Hundreds of rescuers including local civilians, police, soldiers and firemen spent hours moving the rubble brick-by-brick in a bid to dig out survivors.

About an hour after the strike a group of rescuers carried an adult out on a stretcher and laid it down on a grass verge across the road from the ruins.

Then they covered the patient with a foil blanket and walked away. They waited until most of the crowd was preoccupied elsewhere before putting the body, a woman, into a body bag.

The rescuers regularly called for silence and switched off generators and car engines so they could listen for voices beneath the rubble.

Several times they said they heard someone. People muttered to one another that it might be a woman. A group of female volunteers wondered aloud whether whoever was buried might have tried to call on a mobile phone if they had one.

Then the shout would go up "ok let's work". The lights came back on and the frantic human chains resumed passing bricks hand to hand to clear the pile.

Two men who climbed down from the pile after two hours of work told the Telegraph they did not know how many if any people were trapped.

Asked if they could hear voices in the ruins they said: "You could hear them at the beginning."

By 1am, three hours after the strike, the regional governor said the death toll stood at three killed and 20 injured. It would take hours more digging to establish if there were more victims.

Meanwhile, police took notes for a criminal case. In short order fragments of missile had been collected and photographed.

Authorities later said it was an Iskander-K, one of Russia's main ballistic missiles.