Russia launched a large-scale missile attack across Ukraine at the start of peak morning hours yesterday, hitting residential and industrial facilities, killing at least one person and injuring at least 30, Ukrainian officials said.
Agence France-Presse reported that at least three people died in the strikes.
All of Ukraine was under air raid alerts from about 6am with the Ukrainian Air Force saying the country was under several waves of cruise missile threat and in some regions ballistic missiles.
Photo: Reuters
“The enemy is viciously attacking peaceful cities,” Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the military administration of Kryvyi Rih, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Full information about the extent of potential damages would be disclosed after the Russian attack was over, Vilkul said.
The targets of the Russian attack and the full scale of the strikes was not immediately clear. There was no immediate comment from Moscow.
The heaviest casualty toll was in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, where a woman died in a missile attack outside Kryvyi Rih, and 24 were injured in a strike on Novomoskovsk.
Oleksiy Kuleba, deputy head of the office of the Ukrainian president, said that two people died in Khmelnytskyi and Kharkiv Oblast.
In Kryvyi Rih itself, more than 20 houses and a shopping center were damaged in a missile attack, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Serhiy Lysak said.
At least four missiles hit Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, injuring one person, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov also said that two people were injured and two more were trapped under rubble after a strike on Zmiiv.
Acting Mayor of Zaporizhzhia Anatoliy Kurtiev said on Telegram that a missile attack on the city resulted in injuries, but did not provide further detail.
Five blasts were reported in Zaporizhzhia, regional Governor Yuriy Malashko said, adding that at least two people were injured.
“Missiles hit residential areas,” Malaskho said on Telegram.
Military officials in other cities, including Dnipropetrovsk and Khmelnytskyi have also said they were under a “massive missile attack” by Russia.
Nearly two years into the war that Russia started with a full-scale invasion, both sides have shifted to increased airstrikes at each other’s territories, having struggled to make significant gains along the front lines.
Meanwhile, Russia evacuated about 300 residents of Belgorod, a city near the Ukrainian border, over strikes by Kyiv, the governor of the region.
“Some 300 residents of Belgorod, who decided to temporarily evacuate, are at the moment being housed in temporary shelter centres in Stary Oskol, Gubkin and the Korochansky district,” which are further from the border, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a video posted on Telegram.
“Over the past 24 hours we received 1,300 requests to send Belgorod children to school camps away from the city, in other regions,” he said.
The evacuation from Belgorod is the largest of a major Russian city since the war began.
Additional reporting by AFP
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