The death total in the Dnipro apartment building struck by a Russia missile has reached 40, which included at least three children thus far, according to Ukrainian officials.
The fatality total will continue to rise, too, as an estimate 30 more people remain missing Monday after the strike Saturday during an onslaught from Russia.
ABC News reported three children are confirmed among the 40 dead.
While at least one survivor was pulled from the rubble Sunday, hope is sinking on finding more survivors among the estimated 30 still missing.
Ukrainian emergency crews Monday sifted through what was left of the apartment building, placing bodies from one of the war's deadliest single attacks in months in black bags and gingerly carrying them across steep piles of rubble.
Tall cranes swung across the jagged gaps in a row of residential towers, the engines growling as residents of one of Ukraine's largest cities watched largely in silence under a gray sky.
About 1,700 people lived in the multistory building, and search and rescue crews have worked nonstop since the missile strike to locate victims and survivors in the wreckage. The regional administration said 39 people have been rescued and at least 75 were wounded.
The reported death toll put it among the deadliest attacks on Ukrainian civilians since before the summer, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project. Residents said the apartment tower did not house any military facilities.
Oleksander Anyskevych said he was in his apartment when the missile struck.
"Boom — and that's it; we saw that we were alive, and that's all," Anyskevych said Monday as he went to the site to see his wrecked apartment.
He told The Associated Press he knew people who died under the rubble. One of his son's classmates lost her parents.
Dnipro residents took flowers, candles, and toys to the ruins.
"All of us could be in that place," local resident Iryna Skrypnyk said.
The European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, called the strike, and others like it, "inhumane aggression" because it directly targeted civilians.
"There will be no impunity for these crimes," he said in a tweet Sunday.
United Nations Secretary-Gen. Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the Dnipro strike, saying "attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure violate international humanitarian law" and "must end immediately," U.N. associate spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay said Monday.
Asked about the strike Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian military does not target residential buildings and suggested the Dnipro building was hit as a result of Ukrainian air defense actions.
The strike on the building came amid a wider barrage of Russian cruise missiles across Ukraine. The Ukrainian military said Sunday it did not have the means to intercept the type of Russian missile that hit the residential building in Dnipro.
Material from the AP was used throughout this report.