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Russia attacked Ukrainian cities with drones on Thursday, the latest in a series of increasingly frequent daytime assaults, killing one person and wounding many more, authorities said.
More than four years into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has recently intensified its attacks on cities, including during the day.
A Russian drone attack on a shopping centre in Kharkiv killed one person and wounded others, local prosecutors said.
The regional governor, Oleg Synegoubov, posted photos on Telegram showing the charred interior of a department store, with part of a roof and a wall torn away.
Local authorities also reported that three people had been injured in Kherson in a strike on a local bus, and three in Odesa, both in the south of the country.
In the capital Kyiv, journalists heard multiple explosions, with air raid alerts sounding several times throughout Thursday morning.
They also saw numerous people blocked in the metro, which does not cross the capital’s Dnipro River during air raids.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported that four people had been injured, two of whom had been taken to hospital. In particular, a drone had crashed onto a road, he said in a separate statement.
Social media footage showed huge plumes of smoke rising from one of the sites targeted in the morning attack.
Russia also carried out its regular overnight attacks across the country.
“The enemy has been attacking the Kyiv region all night with strike drones and ballistic missiles,” said the head of the Kyiv region, Tymur Tkachenko, adding that warehouses were targeted.
In the northeastern Sumy region, authorities said one person was killed and four others wounded by Russian attacks.
“The enemy attacked civilian transportation in broad daylight while people were simply going about their business,” Yaroslav Shanko, the head of the Kherson city administration, said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated calls for Kyiv’s allies to send more ballistic missile defence packages to counter these attacks.
Additional sources • AFP