A drone strike killed seven people and injured 11 others in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine on Wednesday after a passenger bus was hit in the Donetsk region, according to Moscow-backed authorities.
Denis Pushilin, the Kremlin-supported head of the region, said the drone struck a bus travelling between Moscow and Simferopol in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Russian authorities described the incident as a deliberate attack on civilians. The country's Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal case under terrorism charges, according to state media.
The strike comes amid an intensifying exchange of drone attacks between Russia and Ukraine, with both sides reporting large-scale operations in recent days.
Drone war escalates
Russia said its air defences intercepted 354 drones overnight, underscoring the growing scale of aerial warfare in the conflict.
The latest attack follows a massive Russian missile and drone barrage on Kiev on Tuesday, which Moscow said was retaliation for an earlier strike on a dormitory in Russian-occupied Luhansk.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that further Russian attacks could be imminent, raising fears of another escalation in a war increasingly dominated by long-range drone strikes.
