Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital with missiles and drones overnight into Thursday with the intense strikes causing loud explosions and shaking Kyiv for hours.
Residential buildings were damaged in the attacks that killed. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 11 people were injured.
The attack with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones affected all of the city’s 10 districts, on both sides of the Dnipro River. Many residents took shelter at metro stations after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and other authorities issued the first warnings of the attack.
Russia has intensified its attacks on Kyiv in recent weeks, even as Ukraine’s own long-range drone campaign against Russian military sites and energy facilities has caused fuel shortages and disrupted supply lines inside Russia.
Mr Klitschko urged residents to remain in shelters, describing an ongoing “furious enemy attack” on the capital.
He said five people were injured in the Shevchenkivskyi district and one of the injured, a paramedic, was in extremely critical condition.
In the Desnianskyi district, people were trapped inside a damaged nine-story residential building and rescuers headed to the scene, Klitschko said. In the Holosiivskyi district, a fire broke out on the roof of a multistory building.
In the Sviatoshynskyi and Darnytskyi districts, fire broke out in homes and debris trapped people in buildings.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said the attack partially destroyed a residential building in the Desnianskyi district, sparked fires near residential buildings at two locations in the Pecherskyi district, and ignited a fire near an administrative building in the Solomianskyi district.
He said authorities were also recording damage in the Obolonskyi and Podilskyi districts.
