Five people were killed after a Russian drone hit a Ukrainian passenger train during an overnight assault, which President Volodymyr Zelensky slammed as a blatant “act of terrorism.”
The train was transporting more than 200 people in the Kharkiv region when a Russian drone struck a wagon, with two other UAVs hitting the area alongside it.
Harrowing video and images of the aftermath show that at least two train carriages were destroyed and set ablaze by the impacts, with Ukrainian prosecutors saying that the fragments of five bodies were found at the scene of the strike.
Along with the dead, at least 18 others were wounded by the attack, Zelensky said.
“In any country, a drone strike on a civilian train would be considered in exactly the same way — purely as terrorism,” Zelensky wrote on social media. “There is not and cannot be any military purpose in this.”
“There is, and can be, no military justification for killing civilians in a train carriage,” the Ukrainian president added.
Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, CEO of the Ukrainian national railways Ukrzaliznytsia, said rescue teams and passengers worked quickly to evacuate the burning cars.
The officials also vowed to keep the trains running for Ukrainians despite the deadly attack.
“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.”
The attack on the train was part of a large overnight assault across Ukraine that left at least 10 people dead and dozens wounded, according to Kyiv.
The attack, which saw more than 50 Russian drones fired, killed three people and left more than 30 wounded in Odessa, with another person killed in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Two others were killed in Kyiv’s Bilohorodka village, with officials identifying them as the parents of a four-year-old child.
Zelensky said the latest bombardment proved Russia was ramping up its deadly attack on civilians as the war approaches its fourth anniversary.
With Post wires
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