10 people were killed and others injured in a wave of Russian missile attacks on Ukraine » Today Latest Stories

Kyiv:

A wave of Russian attacks has killed at least ten people and wounded dozens across Ukraine, officials said on Friday, with the death toll expected to rise.

Its governor, Sergei Lysak, said that “nearly 15 people were injured. Four were killed” in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, while other local authorities reported two deaths in Kiev and two more in Odessa. One dead in Kharkiv and one in Lviv.

AFP reporters in Kiev heard several powerful explosions in the early hours of Friday morning and saw thick black smoke rising from a warehouse.

“We have not seen such red on our observers for a long time,” said Yuri Ignat, spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, explaining that Russian forces initially launched a wave of suicide drones followed by missiles.

Presidential Assistant Andrei Yermak said: “There are people killed today by Russian missiles that were launched at civilian facilities and civilian buildings.”

“We are doing our best to strengthen our air shield,” he said on Telegram. “But the world must see that we need more support and strength to stop this terrorism.”

Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that the air defenses in the capital were working intensively and seven people had been taken to hospital.

He added that a metro station whose platforms were being used as a shelter from air raids was damaged.

Sergei Popko, head of the military department in Kiev, said a warehouse measuring about 3,000 square meters (32,300 square feet) was burning in the northern Podil district.

He added: “There are many wounded, and the number is being clarified.”

In other areas of the city, an unoccupied multi-storey residential building also caught fire and a private house was damaged, Popko said.

-Maternity hospital bombed-

Popko said a residential building was damaged in the central Shevchenko district, and a fire broke out in a warehouse, and six were believed to have been injured.

Klitschko wrote on social media that it appeared three people were still under the rubble of the warehouse while three others had been rescued.

The night attacks came days after Ukraine struck a Russian warship in the occupied port of Feodosia in the Crimean Peninsula, in a major setback for the Russian Navy.

Mayors and police said drones and missiles struck at least five other Ukrainian cities on Friday, including Kharkiv in the northeast, Lviv in the west, Dnipro in the east and Odessa in the south.

Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov told television: “So far we have counted 22 raids in different areas of Kharkiv.”

“There are currently seven injured people in hospital. Unfortunately, one person has died.”

In Lviv, the city’s governor, Maxim Kozitsky, said that “one person was killed and three were injured.”

In Dnipro, the mayor of Dnipro, Boris Filatov, said that there were wounded and dead. The Ministry of Health said that the city’s maternity hospital was “severely damaged.”

– Decisive US support –

In the southern port of Odessa, a high-rise building caught fire after debris from a drone fell on it, the city’s mayor said.

“As a result of another enemy attack, one of the high-rise buildings was damaged. The fire was immediately extinguished,” city mayor Gennady Trukhanov said on social media.

Ukraine’s Southern Command said it destroyed 14 attack drones in the south of the country and there were no reports of casualties.

The attacks came after the Kremlin admitted on Tuesday that a Ukrainian missile attack damaged one of its warships.

On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the United States for releasing the last remaining package of weapons available to Ukraine under the current authorization, as uncertainty surrounds further aid to his war-torn country.

Zelensky warned that any change in policy by the United States – Kiev’s main backer – could have a strong impact on the course of the war.

“I thank President Joe Biden, Congress and the American people for the $250 million military aid package announced yesterday,” Zelensky said on social media.

In an interview published on Friday, Christian Freuding, the German general overseeing the German army’s support for Kiev, said Russia was severely weakened but was showing greater “resilience” than the Western allies expected at the start of the war.

“We probably did not see, or did not want to see, that they were in a position to continue being supplied with supplies from the Allies,” he told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)