KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian strikes hit high-rise apartment blocks in Ukraine’s city of Kharkiv, leaving dozens wounded in a second consecutive nighttime attack this past week.
The bombs fell Saturday night on the district of Shevchenkivsky, north of the center of Kharkiv, the second largest city, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. Nine residential buildings sustained varying degrees of damage, including 16- and nine-story blocks, he added.
Twenty-one people were wounded, including an 8-year-old, according to Syniehubov and Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Terekhov said 60 residents were evacuated from one of the buildings.
Kharkiv has been a frequent target of Russian attacks since Moscow launched its all-out invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.
The attack came after another late Friday that wounded 15 people, including a 10- and 12-year-old, as Russian airstrikes hit three Kharkiv neighborhoods, Terekhov said.
According to Ukrainian officials, KAB-type aerial glide bombs were used in both attacks, a retrofitted Soviet weapon that has for months laid waste to eastern Ukraine.
Russia also launched 80 Shahed drones and two missiles at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said. Ukrainian air defense shot down 71 drones, and another six were lost on location due to electronic warfare countermeasures, the statement said.
Farther south, a 12-year-old girl and a woman died after a Russian drone struck a passenger car in the city of Nikopol, local Gov. Serhii Lysak reported. Two others, including a 4-year-old, suffered wounds.
A Russian artillery strike also killed one person in the eastern town of Kurakhove, regional prosecutors said, as Russian forces continue their grinding advance westwards through Ukraine’s industrial Donetsk province.
Russian drone strikes on Sunday also damaged energy infrastructure in Ukraine´s central Poltava region and the northern city of Shostka, local officials reported.
Shostka lies in the Sumy region, across the border from Russia’s Kursk province – the target of a startling Ukrainian military incursion launched last month. Weeks into the incursion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelneskyy said its aim is to create a buffer zone to prevent further Russian cross-border strikes that have for months wreaked havoc in Sumy.
