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Twelve killed by Russian strike near bus in Ukraine, official says

Maia Davies
State Emergency Service of Ukraine A bus at twilight beside a fire engineState Emergency Service of Ukraine
Major energy provider DTEK said the vehicle was carrying its mine workers

Twelve people have been killed by a Russian drone strike near a company shuttle bus in eastern Ukraine, a regional official has said.

Preliminary information also found seven others were injured by the strike in the Dnipropetrovsk region, regional military administration chief Oleksandr Ganzha wrote on Telegram.

Energy company DTEK said the vehicle had been transporting its workers from a mine in the region, calling it a targeted attack.

Meanwhile, local officials said at least three others were killed and nine harmed in separate Russian attacks overnight and early on Sunday - including two women injured while giving birth during a drone strike on a maternity hospital.

Ukraine's largest private energy firm said its miners had been targeted while travelling after a shift, and said 15 people had been killed in the attack.

A separate drone attack in the region overnight killed a man and a woman in the central city of Dnipro, Ganzha had said earlier.

Elsewhere, six people were injured in the strike on a maternity hospital in Zaporizhzhia, regional head Ivan Fedorov said - calling it further "proof of a war directed against life" in a post on Telegram.

He said all those injured were receiving necessary assistance. He shared a video of smoke billowing out of blown-out windows and photographs of shattered glass and burnt debris strewn inside hospital rooms.

Russia launched a waves of targeted attacks on Ukraine's power grid in January, affecting heating and electricity supplies during an extraordinarily cold winter - with temperatures forecast to plunge below -20C in places this weekend.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Russia's President Putin had agreed to halt attacks on Ukraine's major cities during the cold snap, supposedly for a week. The Kremlin later said this would last until Sunday.

Meanwhile, President Zelensky said a second round of trilateral talks to end the war after nearly four years would begin on Wednesday, rather than Sunday as had been planned.

He did not give a reason for the delay, and said the talks between Russian, Ukrainian and US officials would take place in Abu Dhabi.