After the rocket attack on a shopping center in the Ukrainian commercial and industrial city of Kremenchuk that killed at least 18, the search for other possible victims continues.

36 people were still missing on Tuesday morning, as the governor of the Poltava region, Dmytro Lunin, wrote in the Telegram news service.

Hundreds of emergency services are on site.

Lunin also released images showing heavy metal plates being lifted by a crane.

At least 18 people were killed in the attack on Monday, according to Ukrainian sources.

Ukraine blamed Russia for this.

That cannot be verified.

The attack was harshly condemned internationally.

The rocket hit the building in the afternoon.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force, X-22 air-to-surface missiles were used in the attack.

These were fired by Tu-22 long-range bombers from the Russian region of Kursk, it said.

Russian stockpile of precision weapons is shrinking

An air alert had been sounded before the attack.

Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyj assumed that 200 to 1,000 people would still have stayed in the shopping center despite the alarm.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi initially said that more than 1,000 people were in the building.

The American Institute for War Studies (ISW) expects similar attacks to be carried out more frequently by the Russian armed forces in the future.

Because their supply of precision weapons continues to shrink, such attacks with "considerable collateral damage to the civilian population" would probably increase, according to the latest assessment on Tuesday night.

The EU condemned the destruction of the department store "strongly" on Tuesday.

The continued shelling of civilians and civilian buildings is unacceptable and amounts to war crimes, said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrel in Brussels.

He spoke of "another despicable act" and referred to recent rocket attacks on residential areas in Kyiv.

Russia will be held accountable, Borrell said.

Russia described the incident as the result of a chain reaction.

According to the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, rockets were fired at a depot in the city with weapons coming from the West.

This caused the ammunition to explode.

That started the fire in the mall.