At least three people were killed early on Saturday after Russia unleashed its latest overnight air strike on Ukraine, officials said.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said missiles had targeted least five regions across the country and that three people were killed and eight wounded after a high-rise in the capital Kyiv was struck.
“This is the style of terrorists. The style of Russia,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
In a separate post, Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said the damage had been caused by fragments from a downed missile and that air defences had shot down more than 20 missiles around the city.
Emergency workers on Saturday morning were sifting through debris at the scene, where a gaping hole was visible on one side of the building.
Officials in the southeastern region of Dnipropetrovsk said eight people were wounded – two of them children – and several buildings destroyed in attacks there.
Governor Serhiy Lysak said air defences had destroyed nine missiles and three drones but that residential buildings in the regional capital Dnipro and an unspecified infrastructure object were hit.
“Not a single military target,” Mayor Borys Filatov wrote separately on Telegram.
At least three Russian missiles also targeted Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, with one hitting a gas line and triggering a fire, said Mayor Ihor Terekhov. He said emergency services were at the scene but gave no details on casualties.
There were reports of explosions in other cities but no indication of casualties or damage.
Moscow began stepping up regular air strikes on Ukraine in May as Kyiv’s military was planning a counteroffensive, which is now ongoing, to retake Russian-occupied territory in the east and south.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski, Dan Peleschuk, Valentyn Ogirenko and Yurii Khomenko; Editing by Sandra Maler, William Mallard and Toby Chopra)
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