Russian drones, missiles pummel cities across Ukraine / Photo: SERGEY BOBOK - AFP
Russian drones, missiles pummel cities across Ukraine
Russian attacks overnight wounded more than two dozen people in the Ukrainian border city of Kharkiv and killed one in the southern city of Odesa, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday, as Moscow's bombardments escalated.
AFP journalists in Kharkiv saw rescue workers at night hauling panicked civilians from Soviet-era residential buildings hit in the strike, that were surrounded by broken glass and rubble.
"Throughout the evening and night, terrorists attacked our cities and communities. Missiles, drones and glide bombs were used against the Odesa, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions," President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.
The air force said Moscow had launched five missiles, 92 drones as well as the glide bombs across Ukraine overnight. Its units downed four missiles and 62 drones, the statement added.
The death toll meanwhile rose from a Russian attack one day earlier on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, doubling to eight, including an infant, the regional governor said.
In Kharkiv, which Russia is increasingly targeting in night-time bombardments, 25 people were wounded in attacks on residential and commercial districts of the city.
- Fears over US aid -
Four people were wounded near Kyiv, which had been targeted almost daily over the last month and where AFP journalists heard air raid sirens and at least one explosion echo out over the capital.
In the historic Black Sea city of Odesa, one person was killed and nine others were wounded in an attack that damaged residential buildings, authorities said.
The latest night of deadly strikes comes at a critical moment of the war -- launched by the Kremlin nearly three years ago.
Ukrainian forces are losing ground in the east of the country and concerns are mounting in Kyiv over the future of foreign military aid after the victory of Donald Trump in the United States presidential election.
Zaporizhzhia city, where authorities said more than 40 people had been wounded in Thursday's strike, has also come under increasing Russian aerial bombardments in recent weeks.
Six people were killed in a strike on an industrial sector of the city earlier this week.
In late 2022, the Kremlin claimed to have annexed the wider Zaporizhzhia region, alongside the Donetsk region where Russian forces are advancing rapidly, despite not having full military control over them.
Russian officials in occupied Ukrainian territory in Donetsk meanwhile said that Ukrainian drones had killed two employees of a utilities company.
R.Schmidt--MP