A Russian drone strike on a civilian bus in the Ukrainian city of Nikopol has killed four people and injured 16 others, Ukrainian officials said, amid a wave of overnight attacks that left civilians, including children, dead or injured on both sides.
Oleksandr Hanzha, the head of the regional military administration, reported that Russian forces had attacked a municipal bus in the center of Nikopol, a city in Ukraine's eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, with a drone on April 7.
According to him, the bus was pulling into a stop at the time, with people both inside and nearby.
"It was deliberate terror against civilians," he wrote on Telegram.
"It's very scary because the buses are full of people going to work," a Nikopol resident told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service shortly after the attack.
"Just imagine how many victims there would be from just one strike," she added.
"We don't know how to live here -- how to get around the city, or even how to survive," she said, adding that she had been near the site just ten minutes before the strike.
"It's very frightening."
Ukraine's State Emergency Service released images from the site if the incident showing the extent of the damage.
Russian forces attacked the Dnipropetrovsk region more than 10 times overnight, the regional governor also reported.
An 11-year-old boy died and five others were wounded when a house caught fire as a result of a drone strike, he said.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported on April 7 that Russia launched 110 drones against Ukraine overnight.
In Russia's central Vladimir region, the local governor said Ukrainian drones struck civilian infrastructure, killing three people, including a child born in 2014. Governor Aleksandr Avdeev said a 5-year-old girl survived but suffered burns and was hospitalized.
Russian forces shot down 45 Ukrainian drones over the country overnight, the Russian Defense ministry reported on April 7.
Russian regional Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko announced that Russian air defenses had shot down 22 Ukrainian drones over the Leningrad region.
According to several Russian-language Telegram channels, Russia's main Baltic crude export port in the Leningrad region, Ust-Luga, was targeted.
Although the port had previously been damaged following multiple Ukrainian attacks, Bloomberg reported on April 6 that it had resumed oil shipments after brief disruptions.
Amid escalating attacks on energy infrastructure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed a cease-fire focused on halting such strikes.
"If Russia is ready to stop strikes on our energy infrastructure, we will be ready to respond in kind," Zelenskyy said in his April 6 address, adding that the proposal had been conveyed via the United States.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, eight years after seizing control of the Crimean Peninsula and fomenting war in the Donbas, which comprises the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
Russia now occupies about 20 percent of Ukraine's territory and is demanding that Kyiv cede the portion of the Donetsk region that Moscow's forces have failed to capture in years of heavy fighting.
Control over the Donbas is one of the main sticking points in US-brokered efforts to end the war.
Several rounds of US-Ukraine-Russia talks have taken place over the last several months, but no trilateral or bilateral Ukraine-Russia meetings have been held since before the Iran war began on February 28.
