Ukrainian firefighters extinguish a blaze at private homes following a Russian air attack in Sumy, Ukraine, on September 16, 2026 [Ukrainian Emergency Service/AP]By Al Jazeera Staff, AFP and ReutersPublished On 16 Sep 202616 Sep 2026
Ukrainian officials say that a Russian drone strike on a bus near the front line in southern Ukraine has killed at least five people and injured seven others.
The attack on Wednesday hit an area around the city of Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region governor Oleksandr Hanzha said on the Telegram messaging app.
Nikopol sits on the opposite bank of the Dnipro river from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian troops since the first days of the war.
Photos posted by Ukrainian officials showed windows blown out of a white minibus, with a trail of blood streaming down the side of the vehicle.
“Russians cynically struck a passenger bus. They targeted a minibus which carried people going about their daily business,” said Mykola Lukashuk, head of the Dnipropetrovsk region council.
The number of civilians killed in Ukraine has increased sharply this year, according to the United Nations, amid an escalation in strikes.
At least 1,396 civilians were killed and 7,978 others wounded in Ukraine during the first six months of 2026, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, a 37 percent increase from the same period in the previous year.
Meanwhile, at least 250 civilians were killed and 1,596 others injured in Ukrainian attacks inside Russia during the first six months of this year, according to the UN mission, quoting credible Russian open-source reporting – a 121 percent increase in civilian casualties in the country compared with the previous year.
Both Ukraine and Russia deny deliberately targeting civilians in the war that began with Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Elsewhere, an explosion was heard in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Wednesday morning, a witness told the Reuters news agency, while a Russian strike caused a fire at a warehouse there, city authorities said on Telegram.
Russia also attacked energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s central region of Poltava overnight into Wednesday, regional governor Vitalii Diakivnych said, without giving any further details.
A Russian drone also hit an unnamed industrial facility, Diakivnych said on Telegram.
Russia’s Defence Ministry also announced that it had hit a cargo vessel in Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Chornomorsk, in the Odesa region.
