Russian drone strike on bus transporting Ukrainian energy sector workers kills 15

Fifteen people were killed ​and seven wounded after a Russian drone struck a ‍bus carrying miners in Ukraine's southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, energy firm DTEK and government officials said ​on Sunday.

The attack came hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky announced ​that a second round of US-brokered trilateral talks between Ukraine and Russia would take place next week.

DTEK said in a statement that Russian forces had carried out a "massive terrorist attack" on a company mine in the region, and that all the dead and wounded were its employees returning from ‍a shift.

"Today, the enemy carried out a cynical and targeted attack on energy sector ​workers in the Dnipropetrovsk region," Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal wrote on the Telegram app.

Police said the attack took place in the city of Terenivka.

Footage posted by the State Emergencies ‍Service showed a charred bus with shattered windows that had veered off the road.

Several hurt in strike on maternity hospital

Earlier on Sunday, regional officials said at least nine had been wounded in Russian strikes on a maternity hospital and a residential building in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

In a Telegram post, Ukraine's emergency service said the strike wounded three women in the hospital in Zaporizhzhia, and also sparked a fire in the gynecology reception area that was later extinguished. Regional administration head Ivan Fedorov later said the number of injured had risen to six. 

Sunday's strikes also follow remarks by ‍Zelensky earlier in the day that Russia – which said it had agreed to ‌stop attacking Ukrainian ​energy infrastructure until February 1 – was still targeting logistics in Ukraine.

In the past week, Russia has struck energy assets in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa and in Kharkiv in the northeast. It also hit the Kyiv region on Wednesday, killing two people and injuring four. 

Read morePower cuts and freezing temperatures test Kyiv's resilience after Russian attacks

Overnight into Sunday, Russia launched 90 attack drones, with 14 striking nine locations, Ukraine’s air force said in a Telegram post. A woman and a man were killed in an overnight drone strike in Dnipro, according to local administration head Oleksandr Hanzha. 

Russian shelling also hit central Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine, soon after 7am, seriously wounding a 59-year-old woman, according to a Facebook post by the municipal military administration. 

Russia's defence ministry on Sunday morning said its forces had used operational-tactical aviation, attack drones, missile forces and artillery to strike transport infrastructure used by Ukrainian forces. 

In a separate post Sunday, it said that Russian air defences shot down 21 Ukrainian drones flying over southwestern and western Russia. It did not mention any casualties or damage. 

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters and AP )