A Russian bomb attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed at least 33 people on Thursday, authorities said, describing it as a targeted strike on civilians in a key stronghold coveted by Moscow.
A second official tally put the toll at 30, according to AP.
Another 18 people were wounded in one of the largest single attacks this year, which hit a street where police said two city buses were running at the time.
President Volodymyr Zelensky described the location as a bus stop.
Images posted by police showed bodies strewn across a debris-covered street, alongside the charred shell of what appeared to be a bus.
Regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram: “For them (the Russians), a bus with passengers is an attractive target precisely because one strike can kill as many people as possible.”
Moscow did not immediately comment.
Russia denies targeting civilians, although it has regularly pounded Ukrainian cities, towns and other targets since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Filashkin, who heads the regional military administration, ordered authorities in Kramatorsk and neighbouring Sloviansk, another key city in the Donetsk region, to halt public transport over the sharp deterioration in security.
He accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians. “In such circumstances, we have no right to risk the lives of passengers and drivers,” he said.
Moscow’s forces have stepped up drone and guided-bomb strikes on Kramatorsk and other cities in Ukraine’s “fortress belt”, the backbone of Kyiv’s defences in Donetsk, local officials say.
Russia has demanded that Ukraine cede the rest of the region it still controls before it stops fighting, which Kyiv refuses to do.
The pace of Moscow’s battlefield gains there has slowed significantly this year.
The attack came a day after dozens were killed in a massive Russian air assault across Ukraine, which mainly targeted the power grid.
In the northern town of Pryluky, the death toll from Wednesday’s missile strike rose to 22, including five children, with at least 54 people injured.
Rescuers searched the rubble of a residential building for missing residents. Several survivors had to sleep in badly damaged apartments.
Separately on Thursday, morning drone strikes on Kyiv killed three people and wounded 14, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Late on Wednesday, Russian drones hit the capital’s Obolonskyi and Desnianskyi districts, killing four people and injuring 12, including four children, police said.
Russian forces have launched frequent waves of attacks on Kyiv amid a shortage of Ukrainian air defences.
Kyiv police said bomb disposal specialists had defused two more unexploded ballistic missile warheads, each weighing about half a ton, which landed near residential buildings.
Power cuts worsened in the capital, where grid operator Ukrenergo ordered emergency outages, energy company DTEK said.
These are separate from the regular rolling blackouts scheduled across the country.
A public awareness campaign, restarted this month, urges families to prepare emergency kits, store drinking water and keep off-grid power sources ahead of expected prolonged winter blackouts.
Zelensky warned that Russia will probably escalate its daily missile and drone attacks as winter approaches, and appealed to NATO countries for more defence support.
“Supplies of anti-ballistic capabilities, ammunition for our combat aircraft, and investments in interceptors — all of this is directly helping save lives every day,” he wrote online.
Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line, more than four and a half years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Russian technology giant Yandex said one of its data centres in the western Ryazan region was damaged in a Ukrainian drone attack, taking it offline and potentially disrupting online services.
Ukraine also said its forces struck a large oil refinery complex in Salavat, about 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) east of Moscow, which its General Staff called one of Russia’s largest oil refining and petrochemical facilities.
The claim could not be independently verified.
