Mykyta Karagodin and his mates had simply gotten their mango-passion fruit drinks and positioned their dinner order on the terrace of the Ria Lounge on Tuesday night time — a lazy summer time night at a well-liked restaurant within the japanese Ukrainian metropolis of Kramatorsk. Then they heard a whistle.

“First, we thought it was a plane, nothing too serious. But then someone screamed ‘Down on the floor!’” mentioned Mr. Karagodin, 23. “Then there was an explosion.”

A Russian missile landed a direct hit on the restaurant at about 7:30 p.m., the dinnertime rush, when the place was bustling: A younger mom with a child in a stroller, a lady making kissing noises at a husky canine, filming a video of herself on the terrace. The blast wave threw diners and staff towards partitions, furnishings and one another, battering and slicing them with shards of glass and different particles.

By Wednesday night, the loss of life toll from the assault had climbed to 11 folks, together with 14-year-old twin sisters and one other teen. The Ukrainian authorities mentioned that 56 different folks had been wounded. At least one individual was believed to be nonetheless below the rubble.

In the confused moments after the detonation, Mr. Karagodin recalled, a voice shouted for folks to go to the basement. He and his mates pulled wounded and disoriented folks downstairs with them.

“The first floor was completely gone,” he mentioned on Wednesday afternoon, ready to be launched from a hospital after receiving therapy for shrapnel wounds and a concussion. “We were all very lucky.”

Rescuers labored by means of the day, digging out the stays of the restaurant looking for victims or doable survivors. The terrace the place Mr. Karagodin and his mates have been ready for salads was a multitude of overturned black and white sofas, close to a jumble of jagged blocks of concrete. The restaurant’s proprietor paced whereas speaking on her telephone.

As a crane lifted particles off a big pile of twisted rubble, distraught mates and kin of individuals nonetheless lacking waited anxiously behind a police ribbon throughout the road. When a physique was pulled from the rubble, folks strained to see whether or not it was their cherished one. But every time, the physique bag was zipped tightly, and an emergency automotive shortly took it to the morgue.

One girl was awaiting news of her niece. A person was searching for details about his brother-in-law. When emergency staff got here out to take breaks, pouring water onto their heads to scrub off the mud, folks rushed over to ask for updates — with one man displaying a photograph of his lacking relative on his telephone.

Kramatorsk lies simply 20 miles from the entrance strains and the devastated metropolis of Bakhmut, within the Donetsk area — close to sufficient to be a frequent goal of Russian missiles and a approach station for troops. But it’s also simply far sufficient from the preventing to tempt folks into going about their regular each day lives, particularly in current weeks, when the climate turned heat and strikes have been comparatively uncommon.

Ria Lounge, identified to many as Ria Pizza, was a long-running hang-out, significantly widespread in the summertime due to its coated out of doors seating. It is near the Hotel Kramatorsk, which was badly broken in a Russian assault final summer time. The restaurant had closed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started in February final 12 months, however reopened a number of months later.

The restaurant is commonly filled with native residents, international journalists, help staff and Ukrainian troopers.

“Me and my friends went there all the time,” Mr. Karagodin mentioned, describing the employees as younger and pleasant. “Every evening we would rest there, every evening there were people, everyone with kids.”

“It was such a nice evening” on Tuesday, mentioned Oleksandra, 40, an area journalist who was not on the restaurant however lives close by. “A typical summer evening: warm and quiet.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry mentioned in a press release that it had struck a Ukrainian Army command put up, making no point out of a restaurant or civilians, and a Kremlin spokesman repeated Russia’s frequent, false declare that it doesn’t hit civilian targets. It was not clear whether or not a navy command put up existed close by, although troopers are sometimes housed within the neighborhood when they’re rotated away from the entrance.

The medical director of the native hospital in Kramatorsk, Hanna Scherbak, mentioned 49 wounded folks have been admitted there after the assault, affected by head accidents, shrapnel wounds and damaged limbs, together with one who later died.

“We didn’t have any military people. These are all civilians,” she mentioned.

Ukraine’s intelligence company, the S.B.U., mentioned it had detained a person who was accused of helping direct the missile strike. It mentioned the person — described as a Kramatorsk resident working for an area gasoline transportation firm — had despatched video footage of the restaurant to Russian navy intelligence.

At the restaurant, the explosion began a hearth. Diners and onlookers scrambled to achieve the wounded by means of piles of tangled and charred steel, concrete and damaged glass. Some males took off their shirts to make use of as bandages, whereas others wrapped bloodied heads and checked the heart beat of a lady sitting immobile on a sofa.

By late Wednesday, rain had pushed away a lot of the bystanders on the scene, however about 20 folks nonetheless stood throughout the highway, behind the police tape, seemingly rendered silent by fatigue and anxiousness. They had been there all day: Used paper cups, empty bottles of water and power drinks have been piled up round their makeshift ready space.

Friends and kin of somebody nonetheless trapped below the rubble stared on the backs of emergency staff clearing particles from the restaurant. One younger man, with a blue rubber glove on his hand and contemporary white bandages on his leg, crossed the police tape and walked towards the wreckage. A police officer gently escorted him again to the ready group, the place the younger man hugged a younger girl as she quietly cried on his shoulder.

A number of ft away, a middle-aged man paced backwards and forwards.

“Let them all be alive there,” a red-faced girl within the group mentioned to him.

“Let them all be alive,” he echoed.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting from Kramatorsk.