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A Russian drone strike on a passenger train in north-eastern Ukraine has killed five people, prosecutors said, an attack denounced as terrorism by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Prosecutors said fragments of five bodies had been found at the scene of the strike on the train, which occurred on Tuesday by a village in north-eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
The train had been operating from Chop, near Ukraine’s western borders with Hungary and Slovakia, to the town of Barvinkove. Photographs posted online showed at least two carriages ablaze next to a snow-covered railbed.
“In any country, a drone strike on a civilian train would be considered in exactly the same way – purely as terrorism. There is not and cannot be any military purpose in this,” Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Zelenskyy said the latest bombardment undermined peace efforts and urged allies to step up pressure on Moscow to end the war.
“Every such Russian strike erodes the diplomacy that is still ongoing and undermines the efforts of partners who are helping to end this war,” he wrote on social media.
Prosecutors said one drone struck the train and two more hit an area alongside it.
In his post on Telegram, Zelenskyy said four people had been killed and two wounded. The train, he said, was carrying more than 200 passengers, including 18 in the wagon that was hit.
Prosecutors had said earlier that 155 passengers were on board the train. Deputy prime minister Oleksiy Kuleba had described the attack by three drones as a “direct act of Russian terror”.
Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, CEO of Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine’s national railway, thanked rescue teams and fellow passengers who helped evacuate people, and pledged that trains would keep running.
“Keeping things moving is becoming more difficult,” Pertsovskyi wrote on Facebook. “We are regrouping. There will be additional strict security measures in some places, but even on those most frightening days, we cannot give up.”
A barrage of more than 50 Russian drones killed three people and wounded more than 30 people in the southern city of Odesa, regional officials said.
The Black Sea city, key for Ukrainian exports, has been routinely pummelled by Russian forces since they invaded Ukraine nearly four years ago. Regional governor Oleh Kiper said a woman, who was 39 weeks pregnant, and two girls were among the wounded.
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
