(Reuters) -Waves of Russian drones and missiles struck districts across the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early on Tuesday, damaging an apartment building, sparking fires and injuring up to 16 people, city officials said.
Reuters witnesses said drones swarmed over the capital and they heard what appeared to be missiles overhead. An air raid alert remained in effect more than seven hours after it had been proclaimed.
Other parts of the country also came under attack, including areas outside the capital and the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, where the regional governor reported at least four strikes.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that most of the 16 injured were in Solomianskyi district, near the city centre, where a drone damaged the top floor of an apartment building and other non-residential areas.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, noted 12 strikes in five districts. Among the targets was a kindergarten in the city’s eastern edge.
“The capital is coming under a combined attack,” Tkachenko wrote. “The Russians are deploying missiles and strike drones. There are fires in different districts and emergency crews are at work.”
Waves of drones had attacked Solomianskyi district, he said. “This is a very difficult night,” he wrote, adding that there had been power cuts in some areas.
Both Ukraine and Russia have launched mass drone attacks in recent weeks as the two sides have held two sessions of direct talks on ending the more than three-year-old war. The talks have produced agreements on freeing prisoners of war and returning the bodies of fallen soldiers, but little more.
“More strikes by Russian drones on residential buildings in Kyiv,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram. “Russia is continuing its war on civilians.”
Klitschko reported that a 62-year-old U.S. citizen had died in a dwelling opposite a site where medics were providing assistance. He gave no further details and it was not clear how the man had died.
In Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russian air defence units had repelled an attack on the city by two Ukrainian drones. The city’s airports were briefly closed.
(Reporting by Gleb Garanich, Sergiy Karazy, Valentyn Ogirenko, Writing bty Ron Popeski; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Stephen Coates)
