(Reuters) – Russia launched a mass drone attack late on Friday in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, hitting a high-rise apartment block, triggering fires and injuring 46 people, officials said.
Mayor Ihor Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said there had been strikes in 12 locations in four central districts of the city, a repeated target of Russian air attacks lying 30 km (19 miles) from the country’s northeastern border.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the drone strikes, which hit Ukrainian cities several times a week. He said dozens of drones had been launched and Ukraine’s allies were moving too slowly in helping beef up its air defence capability.
“There were no military targets, nor could there be any. Russia strikes dwellings when Ukrainians are in their homes, when they are putting their children to bed,” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram.
“As the world delays decisions, almost every night in Ukraine turns into a horror that results in the loss of lives. Ukraine needs stronger air defences. Stronger and real decisions from our partners: the United States, Europe, all our partners who seek peace.”
Terekhov said a house had also been hit. An 11-year-old child was among the injured. Eight of those hurt were being treated in hospital.
Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said emergency crews were working through the night to tackle the aftermath of the attack despite fears of repeat strikes.
Pictures posted online showed firefighters battling flames, charred building facades with smashed windows and cars aflame in streets littered with rubble.
Regional authorities said four people were also injured in a Russian joint drone and artillery attack on localities east of Nikopol in southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
In southern Kherson region, a village resident died when a fallen drone detonated as he was trying to carry it away from a house.
Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians, though many thousands have been killed since it launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.
Russia’s Defence Ministry, meanwhile, reported that its air defence units had destroyed 10 Ukrainian drones in an hour: eight over the border region of Bryansk and two over Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Yuri Slyusar, acting governor of Rostov region, on Ukraine’s eastern border, said air defence units had destroyed Ukrainian drones over five districts. Falling fragments had damaged some homes, he said, but there were no casualties.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Editing by Rod Nickel, Matthew Lewis, David Gregorio and Diane Craft)
