Russian strike on passenger train in northeastern Ukraine kills five, prosecutors say

A Russian drone strike on a passenger train in northeastern Ukraine killed five people, prosecutors said, an attack denounced as terrorism by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Prosecutors said fragments of five bodies had been found at the scene of the strike on the train by a village in northeastern Ukraine's Kharkiv region.

The train had been operating from Chop, near Ukraine's western borders with Hungary and Slovakia, to the town of Barvinkove.

Photographs posted online showed at least two carriages ablaze next to a snow-covered railbed.

"In any country, a drone strike on a civilian train would be considered in exactly the same way – purely as terrorism. There is not and cannot be any military purpose in this," Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

"Our cause – and this is what should unite all normal people in the world – is to ensure the progress of protecting life. This is possible through pressure on Russia."

Prosecutors said one drone struck the train and two more hit an area alongside it.

In his post on Telegram, Zelenskiy said four people had been killed. The train, he said, was carrying more than 200 passengers, including 18 in the wagon that was hit.

Prosecutors had said earlier that 155 passengers were aboard the train. Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba had described the attack by three drones as a "direct act of Russian terror."

Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, CEO of Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukrainian national railways, thanked rescue teams and fellow passengers who helped evacuate people and pledged that trains would keep running.

"Keeping things moving is becoming more difficult," Pertsovskyi wrote on Facebook. "We are regrouping. There will be additional strict security measures in some places, but even on those most frightening days, we cannot give up."