KYIV, Feb 1 (Reuters) – At least 12 people were killed and seven wounded after a Russian drone struck a bus carrying miners in Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, energy firm DTEK and government officials said on Sunday.
The attack came hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced that a second round of U.S.-brokered trilateral talks between Ukraine and Russia would take place next week.
DTEK said in a statement that Russian forces had carried out a “massive terrorist attack” on a company mine in the region, and that all the dead and wounded were employees returning from a shift.
“Today, the enemy carried out a cynical and targeted attack on energy sector workers in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” wrote first deputy prime miniser Denys Shmyhal, who is also energy minister, on the Telegram app.
DTEK and Shmyhal had earlier put the death toll at 15.
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Police said the attack took place in the city of Terenivka. Footage posted by the State Emergencies Service showed a charred bus with shattered windows that had veered off the road.
Earlier on Sunday, regional officials said at least nine had been wounded in Russian strikes on a maternity hospital and a residential building in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.
Sunday’s strikes also follow remarks by Zelenskiy earlier in the day that Russia – which said it had agreed to stop attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure until February 1 – was still targeting logistics in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Alexander Smith, David Holmes and Hugh Lawson)
