A Russian guided bomb hit a street in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, where two city buses were operating, and regional authorities and the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office said at least 33 people were killed and 18 wounded.

The bomb struck at about 10 a.m. local time in the Donetsk region, in one of the largest single attacks in Ukraine this year. The toll climbed through the day — first 12, then 30 — before authorities settled on 33 dead.

Prosecutors said Russian forces likely used guided bombs against the vehicles. Police said the buses were hit with a glide bomb. Glide bombs are fitted with winglets so they travel toward a target rather than simply fall. There was no immediate comment from Moscow.

Bodies lay scattered across a road strewn with debris, next to the charred shell of what appeared to be a bus, in Images the police released.

Three people killed by shelling in a village near Kramatorsk were killed in Bilenke, which rescue officials say is part of the Kramatorsk community.

Transport Halted in Two Cities

Donetsk Gov. Vadym Filashkin ordered city authorities in Kramatorsk and neighboring Sloviansk to stop all public transport. Residents who remain in the eastern front-line region should relocate to safer parts of Ukraine, he urged.

“For them (the Russians), a bus with passengers is an attractive target precisely because one strike can kill as many people as possible,” Filashkin said on Telegram.

Rescue crews carried out their work while small drones kept up further Russian attacks, according to Oleksandr Honcharenko, who heads the Kramatorsk military administration.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the targeted site as a bus stop. “This strike will not go unanswered,” he said.

Russia’s leadership has no intention of stopping the killing, said Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha. The Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets, accused Moscow of methodically wrecking the city and terrorizing those who remain in it.

Ukrainian cities and towns have been pounded regularly by Russia ever since its full-scale invasion began in February 2022, though Moscow denies targeting civilians.

Al Jazeera correspondent Audrey MacAlpine said ballistic missiles and first-person-view drones are more accurate than glide bombs, so there is no way to know whether the buses were deliberately hit. She called the attack one of the largest and deadliest aerial strikes in recent months.

Apartment Block Hit in Pryluky

At least 25 people nationwide died, two of them in Kyiv, when a massive Russian air attack across Ukraine on Wednesday, Oct. 7, aimed primarily at the power grid.

A missile hit a five-story apartment block in Pryluky, a town in the Chernihiv region about 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of Kyiv, killing 22 people, among them five children — three of them only one year old. At least 50 others were wounded.

Zelenskyy noted the barrage fell on Putin’s birthday, saying Russian forces had destroyed the building as a birthday gift to the Russian leader.

British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband toured the Pryluky site with Zelenskyy and announced new sanctions aimed at Russia’s shadow fleet, oil companies and the financing of the war. Miliband said the attack showed Putin’s “evil intent and evil strategy.”

Morning drone strikes on Kyiv, also on Oct. 8, left three people dead and 14 wounded, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Across the country, 78 people had been killed and 215 wounded by strikes over the previous two days, Zelenskyy said. Zelenskyy also appealed for more defense support from NATO countries, and Kyiv faces worsening power outages with officials urging families to prepare for expected winter blackouts.

More than 17,000 civilian deaths in the war have been verified by the U.N., which says the real number is considerably higher. More civilians were killed by August this year than in all of 2025.

Ukrainian Strikes and Talks

Drones knocked a Yandex data center in Russia’s Ryazan region offline on Oct. 8, and Zelenskyy confirmed the hit as mirroring earlier Russian attacks. The Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat refinery in Bashkortostan was set alight by Ukrainian forces, who also said they struck Russia’s largest refinery, in Omsk, Siberia.

Air defenses destroyed 399 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defense Ministry said.

Ukrainian negotiators would travel to the United States for talks on Friday, Oct. 9, and Saturday, Oct. 10, Zelenskyy said, and he urged President Donald Trump to intensify pressure on Moscow.

The war is at a stalemate and Washington will keep working to facilitate a settlement, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Portugal. No clear path to any peaceful resolution was visible, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Oct. 8.

A City in the Fortress Belt

The backbone of Ukraine’s defenses in Donetsk — the so-called fortress belt — is anchored by Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and Moscow’s forces have intensified their drone and guided-bomb strikes against both cities. In late August, as many as nine glide bombs were fired at Kramatorsk in a single day.

For much of the war, Kramatorsk served as a logistics and supply hub for Ukraine’s military. It now absorbs near-daily attack as Russian troops press toward its eastern edge.

Russia has demanded that Kyiv surrender the rest of the Donetsk region before it stops fighting, and Ukraine rejects the demand. Most of Luhansk is already under Russian control, and the Kremlin is pressing to seize the rest of Donetsk. The pace of Russian battlefield gains has slowed significantly this year.