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A Russian drone strike on a shopping centre in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has wounded four people and sparked a large fire, as Moscow continued a wave of attacks across the country.
The drone struck an Epicentr home-improvement hypermarket on Friday morning, setting fire to around 2,000 square metres of the building, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov.
The strike was part of another widespread Russian assault on Ukraine, with attacks also reported in the Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
One person was killed and two others wounded in the Kyiv region on Friday morning, according to local authorities.
Warehouses, homes and apartment buildings were damaged across several districts around the capital, which has faced repeated Russian drone attacks for a second consecutive day.
Warehouse facilities in the Boryspil and Fastiv districts were among the sites targeted on Thursday.
The attacks come as both Russia and Ukraine have stepped up long-range strikes in recent months, increasingly targeting infrastructure far from the front lines.
Ukraine has carried out repeated drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities, as well as logistics sites. Kyiv has also recently targeted warehouses operated by major Russian online retailers Wildberries and Ozon, accusing them of supporting Moscow’s military.
Kherson residents urged to leave as attacks intensify
Further south, a Russian drone attack killed a man in Kherson on Friday, hours after authorities urged residents to leave amid increasingly intense attacks that threaten to leave the city without heating or electricity this winter.
The 61-year-old man was seriously wounded in Kherson’s Korabelnyi district and later died in hospital, according to Yaroslav Shanko, head of the city’s military administration.
Three other people were taken to hospital after a separate drone attack.
Regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin on Thursday urged residents, “especially families with children and elderly people”, to leave because of what he described as an “extremely difficult security situation”.
Russian forces remain positioned across the Dnipro River from Kherson, putting the city within easy range of drones, artillery and aerial bombs.
The city’s combined heat and power plant was struck by four Russian guided aerial bombs overnight on Thursday.
Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz said the attack caused critical damage and destroyed all of the heat- and power-generating equipment remaining at the plant, leaving it inoperable.
Prokudin warned residents could be left without electricity or heating “not for hours or days but for a long period”.
Since the beginning of July, Russia has dropped about 170 guided aerial bombs on the Kherson region – more than during the entire first six months of the year, according to Prokudin.
Kherson has suffered a series of deadly drone attacks in recent days, including a strike on a minibus that killed four people on 19 August.
Russian troops captured Kherson shortly after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukraine recaptured the city that November, but Russian forces remain on the opposite bank of the Dnipro, leaving it exposed to frequent shelling and drone attacks.
The renewed attacks on energy infrastructure come after Russian strikes repeatedly damaged Ukraine’s electricity and heating systems last winter, causing prolonged outages across the country.
Additional sources • AFP, AP