At least 14 people have been killed after a Russian jet-powered drone hit a crowded platform at the main railway station in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, local officials have said.
Dnipropetrovsk regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said at least 14 others were wounded in the attack, including an 11-year-old boy.
Ukraine’s state railway operator, Ukrzaliznytsia, said a passenger train headed for the southern city of Zaporizhzhia was at one of the platforms in Dnipro when the drone hit.
Russia’s military has not publicly commented. It has repeatedly hit Ukraine’s large railway network, but Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians.
In Dnipro, an elevated threat level was announced ahead of Thursday’s strike, according to the railway operator chief, Oleksandr Pertsovsky.
“But unfortunately there were still a large number of people on the platform” when the drone struck, he said.
Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov said the incident was a tragedy, adding that a drone hit an electric civilian train.
Pictures from the Ukrainian rescue services show a large hole in a platform that is strewn with blurred-out bodies, near a blast-damaged train with smashed windows.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “the Russians used a drone to attack a platform where a regular commuter train and a regular passenger train were standing.”
He called for further US, European and G7 sanctions on Russia and repeated his criticism of a controversial deal that was struck earlier this month between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, which eased some sanctions on Moscow, allowing the US to import Russian diesel.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, two girls aged 15 were killed in a Russian missile attack on the centre of Chernihiv city, in the north of the country, regional head Vyacheslav Chaus said. At least 25 others, including four children, were injured, he added.
A day of mourning has been declared for Chernihiv and Dnipro on Friday.
In the city of Kremenchuk, in the central Poltava region, three people were killed and 28 injured in a Russian drone attack that hit residential buildings and a school, regional head Vitaliy Diakivnych said.
