Ukraine’s government building on fire following Russian drone attack
An infant is among three people killed in Kyiv overnight after Russia launched a huge wave of aerial attacks that left Ukraine’s cabinet building on fire.
The attacks, which also included air strikes, injured 18 people and sparked flames at the government building in the city’s Pecherskyi district.
Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s prime minister, said the roof and top floors of the Cabinet of Ministers building had been damaged for the first time in the war and firefighters are working to extinguish the blaze.
Witnesses reported smoke rising from the roof.
Russia launched 805 drones and 13 missiles at Ukraine overnight, Kyiv’s air force said.
The drone attacks killed the infant and a young woman, Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app, while a pregnant woman was among the five injured admitted to the hospital.
Earlier, Mr. Klitschko had said an elderly woman died in a bomb shelter in the leafy Darnytskyi district to the east of the Dnipro River, the site of the other two deaths.
State emergency officials said a fire broke out on two of the four stories of a residential building in the district hit in the drone attack, with its structure partially destroyed.
In the western district of Sviatoshynskyi, several floors of a nine-story residential building were partially destroyed, Klitschko and emergency officials said.
Falling drone debris set off fires in a 16-story flat building and two more nine-story buildings, the mayor added.
Russia ‘deliberately striking civilians’
Smoke billowed out of flat buildings, some with floors partially collapsed and facades crumbled, in social media photographs posted by emergency officials.
Russia was “deliberately and consciously striking civilian targets”, Timur Tkachenko, the head of the capital’s military administration, said on Telegram.
Dozens of explosions shook Ukraine’s central city of Kremenchuk, cutting power to some areas, Mayor Vitalii Maletskyi said on Telegram.
Russian strikes on Kryvyi Rih in the same region targeted transport and urban infrastructure, Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the military administration, said on Telegram, but with no injuries reported.
In the southern city of Odesa, civilian infrastructure and residential buildings were damaged, with fires breaking out in several flat blocks, regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.
Moscow did not immediately offer comment. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the strikes, but thousands have died in the war Russia launched with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
With western Ukraine facing the threat of air attacks, Poland activated its own and allied aircraft to ensure air safety, the operational command of the Polish armed forces said.
World Affairs Correspondent
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