UP to 60 civilians are feared dead after a Russian bomb hit a village school in eastern Ukraine on Saturday.
Some 90 residents had been sheltering in the school in Bilohorivka, near the frontline in the Donbas region.
Yesterday afternoon the building was hit by a Russian airstrike, sparking a fire that raged for several hours according to Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk Oblast.
Only around 30 survivors have been found, with seven injured and two confirmed dead.
It comes amid reports of renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine on Sunday morning.
"Unfortunately, the bodies of two people were found," Haidai wrote on the social media app Telegram.
"Thirty people were evacuated from the rubble, seven of whom were injured. Sixty people were likely to have died under the rubble of the buildings."
UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she was "horrified" by the attack and said Vladimir Putin's regime in Moscow would be held to account.
Truss tweeted: “Horrified by Russia’s latest attack on a school in Luhansk, resulting in the deaths of innocent people sheltering from Russian bombardment.”
She said the deliberate targeting of civilians and infrastructure “amounts to war crimes” and “we will ensure Putin’s regime is held accountable”.
Her comments came as G7 leaders including Boris Johnson and Joe Biden prepared for talks with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Ukrainian government has accused Moscow of targeting educational establishments, including schools and colleges, completely destroying more than 20 sites since the Russian invasion began.
The attack on the school is just one among many this weekend.
There has been fierce fighting around Popasna in Luhansk in recent days amid a sustained Russian assault. Haidai said Ukrainian forces had been pulling back and that everything in the town had been destroyed.
Meanwhile, Russian-backed separatists in the neighbouring Donetsk region said the city of the same name and another town, Holmivskyi, had come under Ukrainian shelling on Sunday.
Diplomatic efforts are continuing to try to rescue wounded soldiers from the besieged Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol.
Ukraine says all remaining women, children and elderly were evacuated from the steelworks on Saturday.
Russia also launched several missile strikes at the southern port city of Odesa on Saturday.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence suggested Russian forces were struggling because of the high casualty rate among Moscow’s commanders.
A defence intelligence update said: “Difficulties in command and control, as well as faltering Russian performance on the front line, have drawn senior commanders onto the battlefield, likely to take personal leadership of operations.”
This has put them at risk of being targeted, with “disproportionately high losses of Russian officers in this conflict".
“This has resulted in a force that is slow to respond to setbacks and unable to alter its approach on the battlefield,” the update said.
“These issues are likely to endure given the relative lack of operational command experience of the officers promoted in place of those killed.”
The UK has pledged an extra £1.3 billion in military support to Ukraine, in a dramatic escalation of assistance for Zelensky’s forces as they fight the Russian invasion.
