A Russian night-time attack on an eastern district in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv has killed three people and injured 10 others, city officials said.
Thursday’s attack, which began around 3:00 am local time (00:00 GMT), inflicted the largest number of casualties from one attack on Kyiv in weeks.
The Kyiv military administration, in a post on the Telegram messaging app, said that two children had died in the Desnianskyi region on the capital’s eastern outskirts.
“Among the three dead in the Desnianskyi district, there were 2 children (aged 5-6 and 12-13),” the military administration wrote on Telegram.
Preliminary indications were that Kyiv’s air defences intercepted all incoming projectiles, and that the deaths and injuries were caused by falling debris. Authorities said the impact was from intercepted Russian cruise or ballistic missiles.
The Kyiv Independent news outlet reported that multiple explosions were heard in the city in the early hours of Thursday morning and that the city’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said emergency workers were responding in the city’s Dniprovskyi district – nearer to the centre of the capital.
Klitschko said on Telegram that a medical clinic had been hit as well as residential buildings.
Debris from projectiles shot down by the city’s air defences had fallen in the Desnianskyi district, according to the city’s military administration, the news outlet reported.
The air raid marks the 18th attack on the capital in May and on the first day of June.
Pictures from the scene of an attacked site posted on social media showed rescue teams attending to residents in buildings, with shattered building materials strewn about on the street outside.
It was not immediately clear what weaponry was used in the air raid. Discussions on social media suggested it was a missile, given the short time between the declaration of the air raid alert around Kyiv and the impact. The alert was in effect for about an hour.
Ukrainian member of parliament Inna Sovsun deplored the deaths of the children in “yet another missile attack”.
“The air raid alert is off now, but I cannot sleep. Holding my son’s hand, making sure he sleeps well,” Sovsun wrote in a tweet.
<<Aljazeera>>