Russian missile fire, which killed dozens of people, hit a cafe in the village of Groza on Thursday, where a memorial service was held for a fallen soldier, a Ukrainian official told RBC.

As a result of the attack, the soldier’s son, wife and mother were killed, Dmytro Chubenko, the spokesman of the prosecutor’s office of the Kharkiv region, said.

Ukrainian officials said at least 51 people were killed, including an 8-year-old boy, and six people were wounded in the shelling of the cafe and a nearby grocery store.

It was one of the worst attacks on civilians since the beginning of the conflict.

The deceased Ukrainian soldier was previously buried in the city of Dnipro, but his relatives wanted him to be reburied in his native village, Chuubenko said.

The attack took place around 1:15 p.m. local time (11:15 GMT), affecting a grocery store and a cafe in the village of Groza, about thirty kilometers west of Kupyansk, regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram.

Before the war, about 500 people lived in Grozny.

He added that a six-year-old boy was among the dead, and six others were injured.

Zelensky published a photo of several people lying on the ground without signs of life.

In the pictures published by Sinegubov, you can see piles of rubble and rescuers at the scene.

During the conflict, Kharkiv has come under relentless Russian attacks as Moscow tries to retake territory liberated from Ukraine in a surprise counteroffensive operation last year.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, said on Thursday that she was “appalled” by the deadly attack in the Ukrainian village of Groza that left at least 51 people dead, describing the images as “absolutely horrific”.

“The images coming out of this community of just over 300 people are simply horrific,” she wrote in a statement. According to the Ukrainian authorities, at least 51 people were killed in the Russian attack, which struck a crowd attending a memorial ceremony for a fallen villager, Brown says.