Russian drone strike kills 14 on Ukrainian rail platform

A Russian drone strike killed at least 14 people on a crowded rail platform in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday and five in daytime strikes on two other cities, officials said, even as a local truce in Kherson raised cautious hopes for a resumption of diplomacy. Two teenage girls were killed on a central street in Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, and three people died in strikes on residential buildings in the central city of Kremenchuk. “Russia is deliberately hunting civilians: on trains, at stations, in residential buildings,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergiy Koretskyi said on the Telegram app. “There is no justification for this terror, and there never can be.

” The six-day truce brokered with US help applied only to southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, where a humanitarian mission was underway to provide relief to the Russian-held town of Oleshky, marooned in a war zone since the start of Russia’s 2022 invasion. Elsewhere, Russian drone and missile attacks on critical infrastructure including the rail network have upended civilian life and ravaged the economy. The strikes have exploited an acute shortage of air defence missiles. BODIES SCATTERED ACROSS PLATFORM In Dnipro, state railway Ukrzaliznytsia said a jet-powered drone had struck a platform at the city’s main station, where a commuter train was preparing to depart. Mangled bodies lay scattered across the shrapnel-marked pavement, where patches of bright red blood had pooled up. Police filled black body bags amid the wail of an air-raid siren. “And for what? What goal are they (Russians) trying to achieve? ” said Svitlana Shcherbak, a 67-year-old traveler sheltering underground at the station. “I don’t understand it at all. ” Moscow denies hitting non-military targets, despite a mounting bombing campaign…