Russian air attacks kill four in Kharkiv, injure six in Kyiv, Ukraine says

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KYIV (Reuters) – At least four people were killed and another six injured in Russia’s waves of overnight attacks on Ukraine’s two largest cities of Kharkiv and Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday.

Another two were killed and seven injured in Russian shelling on Kherson city in southern Ukraine in the morning, a local governor said.

Russian forces have been attacking Ukrainian regions almost every night with drones, and the Ukrainian military reported that overnight they had shot down 26 out of 48 drones launched.

Four people were killed in Kharkiv in the early hours of Tuesday in Russia’s bombardment of the city’s Osnovianskyi district, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on his Telegram messaging channel.

A local emergency service published a video showing rescuers removing the rubble of the completely destroyed building under floodlights and carrying a black bag in which the bodies of the dead are usually placed.

That attack followed a Russian guided bomb attack on Kharkiv late on Monday that shattered much of the Derzhprom building, one of the most celebrated landmarks in the city, dating from the 1920s.

In Kyiv, falling debris from a destroyed Russian drone injured six people and set a residential building on fire, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said.

One of the people injured by debris in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district was taken to hospital, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on his Telegram channel. He said several cars were also on fire.

A Reuters witness saw smoke rising over the district’s residential area, which is located in Kyiv’s west. Photos posted by Kyiv’s military administration on its Telegram channel showed a residential building and nearby cars burning in the dark.

The administration said Ukraine’s air defence units were trying to repel a Russian drone attack on the city and that drone debris fell also onto the Sviatoshynskyi district in Kyiv’s west, but there was no immediate reports of damage.

In the morning attacks on Kherson, governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on the Telegram messenger that the victims of the Russian shelling were a 62-year-old man and a 66-year-old woman.

Kherson region is split by the front line and regularly hit by Russian artillery, drones and missiles.

There was no immediate comment from Russia about the attacks.

Moscow denies targeting civilians in the war sparked by its invasion of its neighbour Ukraine in February 2022.

The 2-1/2-year war has killed thousands of people, the vast majority of them Ukrainians, and it has turned cities and villages into piles of rubble.