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Russia launched a major drone and missile assault on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities for a second consecutive night, killing at least four people and injuring 16.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 81 “Shahed” attack drones and 10 missiles were fired at civilian and infrastructure targets.
“The rescue operation is ongoing at the sites of hits and falling debris. All services are involved, debris is being cleared,” he wrote in a post on X.
Zelensky also vowed retaliation for the attack.
“We will definitely respond to Russia for this and all other strikes. Crimes against humanity cannot be committed with impunity,” he said.
The deaths were all in the south and east of the country with two people killed in the Zaporizhzhia region after Russian artillery bombarded the city of Zaporizhzhia and surrounding areas.
The State Emergency Service said in an update on social media that seven residential buildings and civilian infrastructure were struck, killing a man and a woman and injuring four others.
The two dead people were pulled from the rubble of a building but a man and a woman were rescued and taken to a hospital.
Three of the seven buildings were set ablaze resulting in a major 4,300 square-foot fire but emergency services were able to put it out.
A woman was injured in a fire in another part of the city after a private workshop and car were struck while a third woman was injured after shelling sparked a wildfire in two city districts and a surrounding village, SES said.
In Kryvyi Rih, 90 miles to the west, two people were killed and five injured after a rocket hit a hotel, partially demolishing the four-story building.
SES said search and rescue operations were still in progress and that the death toll would likely rise as it believed two more bodies were beneath the rubble from the attacks which also damaged four apartment buildings, six stores and eight cars.
In the frontline Kharkiv region, four people were injured when a Russian missile struck an infrastructure facility in Izyumsk district, 74 miles southeast of Kharkiv, Gov. Oleh Synehubov reported in a social media update, and private residences in the village of Kupiansk-Vuzlovy were shelled, triggering fires.
Elsewhere, the Kyiv region came under heavy attack for several hours overnight but no casualties or damage were reported.
Kyiv city administration head Serhii Popko said about 10 attack drones and several missiles were downed.
“Everything that flew to the capital was destroyed.”
The latest bombardment came as U.S. President Joe Biden denounced a massive aerial onslaught Monday targeting Ukraine‘s energy infrastructure and civilian targets in which seven people were killed and dozens injured and vowed to move swiftly to help it fix damage to its power network.
“I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, Russia’s continued war against Ukraine and its efforts to plunge the Ukrainian people into darkness”, Biden said in a post on X.
He vowed the United States’ continued leadership of an international support coalition and said his administration was “surging” energy equipment deliveries to Ukraine to repair its systems and energy grid.
“Russia will never succeed in Ukraine, and the spirit of the Ukrainian people will never be broken,” Biden said.
UPI