Ukraine: Several killed as Russia strikes bus, other targets

Russian artillery and aerial strikes across Ukraine killed at least nine people on Tuesday, including a child, officials said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian drone strikes ona region east of Moscow, and Russian-occupied regions in Ukraine, killed five, also including a child.

The latest exchange of strikes are part of a wider intensification of cross long-range drone and missile attacks, mainly targeting infrastructure, while Kyiv pushes for an Easter ceasefire. Orthodox Easter is observed at the end of this week.

What do we know about the latest Russian strikes on Ukraine?

Russian forces struck Ukraine's southern city of Kherson, killing four people and wounding several others, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said, comparing the Russian shelling to "hell."

Meanwhile, in the frontline city of Nikopol, which lies on the banks of the Dnipro river that forms a de facto front line in the south of Ukraine, a Russian drone attacked a passenger bus, killing four people.

"The Russians continue their deliberate terror against people in Nikopol and other cities and communities near the front," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said of the attack.

The attack ripped a yellow mini-bus open in a city that was once home to some 100,000 people, before Russia's 2022 fullscale invasion. Russian ground forces continue their battle to advance in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where Nikopol is located.

A separate bus also suffered another drone attack, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Oleksandr Ganzha, said. Officials said the second attack left five injured.

Russian drone attacks on civilian vehicles including public transport in Dnipro have been occurring frequently more recently.

Overnight, a separate Russian drone struck the Dnipropetrovsk region, killing an 11-year-old boy and wounding five others, the governor said.

Ukrainian drone strikes kill 5 civilians

In the Russian mainland, and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, Ukrainian drone strikes killed five civilians, including a 12-year-old boy and his two parents in the Vladimir region east of Moscow.

In part of Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia in southeast Ukraine, drones struck a school in the village of Velikaya Znamenka, killing a local official as he attempted to help the children escape. Five children were among the six injured in the attack, according to Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-backed governor.

Meanwhile in Russian-controlled Kherson, a Ukrainian drone strike killed a woman in her fifties, Vladimir ⁠Saldo, the Moscow-backed governor, said in a statement.

Separately, the Ukrainian military on Tuesday said it had struck Russia's Ust-Luga oil terminal.

Kyiv has intensified strikes on Russia's oil infrastructure, as it sounds the alarm over how the energy crisis triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran could revive Moscow's fuel industry after years of sanctions.

Edited by: Wesley Rahn