Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include the new number of casualties.
A Russian missile strike hit a railway station in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on Aug. 24, killing at least 15 people and wounding about 50 others, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his address to the UN Security Council.
The attack was carried out in the village of Chaplyne, “directly on the rail cars,” where four train cars caught fire as a result of the attack, Zelensky said. The rescue operation is ongoing.
Photos shared by the Ukrainian military show a train with cars almost flattened by what appears to be the result of the strike. Nearby buildings and vehicles were severely damaged, the photos suggest.
Later in the evening, Zelensky said that 22 people were killed by Russia's attacks on the village of Chaplyne on Aug. 24. He did not specify the number of those killed in the strike on the train station.
Earlier on Aug. 24, Deputy Head of the President’s Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko reported that another Russian missile attack on the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast’s Synelnykivskyi district near Dnipro city killed an 11-year-old boy. A woman and a 13-year-old boy were also found under the rubble of the destroyed home but they had survived the attack.
Zelensky had warned that Moscow might attempt "something particularly cruel" this week as Ukraine celebrates its 31st Independence Day on Aug. 24.Local authorities across the country took additional safety measures this week, such as imposing a whole-day curfew, amid the heightened risks of Russian attacks. Kyiv authorities banned mass gatherings in the capital through Aug. 25.
Air raid sirens blared across most of Ukraine as Russian missiles pummeled areas across the country on a symbolic day. Ukrainian air defense systems were on high alert all day, shooting down incoming missiles over several regions including Cherkasy Oblast where it is usually very quiet.
While the latest missile strike on the railway station remains the deadliest attack on Aug. 24, Russian artillery also pummeled Donetsk, Kharkiv and Sumy oblasts in the east of the country and Mykolaiv Oblast in the south.
Russian missile strikes hit a military infrastructure in the city of Myrhorod in central Ukraine’s Poltava Oblast, the 831st Tactical Aviation Brigade said. There were no casualties reported, according to Poltava Oblast Governor Dmitriy Lunin.
Several loud explosions were also reported in Khmelnytsky Oblast, where missiles struck some undisclosed facilities, according to Governor Serhiy Hamaliy. Military monitoring project Belarusian Hajun says that the four rockets were launched from Belarus’s Homel region.
“This is how we live every day,” Zelensky said.
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