INTERNATIONAL: Residents fled from cities in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Sunday 10 April after Russian rocket attacks on a train station in Kramatorsk killed over 50 people.

Streets across Slovansk, a city around 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) from Kramatorsk, appeared empty on Sunday.

A local military official said that the number of people taking the train in Slovansk had dropped significantly since the attack on Kramatorsk.

“We will fight to the death. It’s our land, and we are not going to surrender,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, who is currently in Kramatorsk.

Russia has failed to take any major cities since it launched its invasion on Feb. 24 but Ukraine says it has been gathering its forces in the east for a major assault and has urged people to flee.

Authorities began evacuating civilians from cities and towns in the east on Thursday (April 8) ahead of an anticipated Russian offensive.

Mounting civilian casualties have triggered widespread international condemnation and new sanctions, in particular over hundreds of deaths in the town of Bucha, to the northwest of Kyiv that until just over a week ago was occupied by Russian forces.

Moscow has rejected accusations of war crimes by Ukraine and Western countries. It has denied targeting civilians in what it calls a "special operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" its southern neighbour. Ukraine and Western nations have dismissed this as a baseless pretext for war.

Russia is seeking to establish a land corridor from Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and the eastern Donbas region that is partly held by Moscow-backed separatists, Britain's defence ministry has said.

^{PHOTO: EMPTY STREETS IN SLOVYANSK / TRAVELLERS ON PLATFORM AT SLOVYANSK RAILWAY STATION / EXTERIOR OF KRAMTORSK RAILWAY STATION THAT RUSSIAN FORCES ATTACKED / WORKERS REPAIRING STRUCTURE AT STATION / BUILDINGS DAMAGED IN SHELLING / SOUNDBITES FROM UKRAINIAN ARMY COMMANDER AND MEMBER OF UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT / EMPTY STREETS OF KRAMATORSK}