A passenger train carrying out an evacuation flight has come under fire in the pro-Russian Donetsk region of Ukraine, killing one man and injuring one woman, according to reports.
The train was hit by debris as it rolled near to Brusyn station amid a bout of shelling on Sunday, reports Ukrainian Railways. Its conductor died as a result of their injuries.
It claims the train was making an evacuation flight to the city of Lyman to pick up fleeing residents from the separatist-controlled Luhansk and Donetsk regions, when it got caught up in a nearby airstrike.
Reports suggest about 100 children were waiting to be evacuated by the train from Lyman station.
Another women was also injured by the blast and was rushed to a hospital in Sloviansk, a city in the eastern Donetsk oblast.
The carrier said it is currently working to evacuate the train crew and passengers.
The head of the Donetsk local government, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said that the occupiers had carried out an air raid on the Kramatorsk-Lviv evacuation train, which he said was hit at around 12am this morning.
Writing on Facebook today, he said: “All night Russian planes and artillery struck the north of the Donetsk region.
“As a result of this cynical crime one person was killed, one injured.”
He also claimed that Russian airstrikes damaged two buildings of the Svyatogirsk Lavra - a major Orthodox Christian monastery he said was housing around 1,000 people, of which 200 were children.
As a result, one person was sent to hospital for their injuries, while another 30 people were treated for their wounds on site.
He added: “The occupants have crossed all possible limits of common sense and humanity. Should get the proper punishment for their hellish crimes!”
Since war began on 24 February, Ukrainian Railways the has evacuated more than two million people, reports the Ukrainian news outlet Hromadske.
