A devastating night-time barrage by Russian drones has left a trail of destruction and loss of life in Ukraine, with a 15-year-old girl killed in a strike on a 25-storey apartment block in Kyiv. The attack, which lasted for seven and a half hours, saw Russian forces pummelling the city with a total of 91 drones and seven missiles. Ukrainian air defences were able to shoot down “up to a dozen” of the drones, but the strike still managed to cause significant damage and injury.
According to Kyiv’s mayor, Vitalii Klitschko, the drone struck the apartment block on Friday night, killing the 15-year-old girl and injuring five others. Emergency services reported that 100 people were evacuated from the building, with several apartments on the upper floors damaged.
In addition to the attack in Kyiv, another Russian missile hit a residential area in the central city of Dnipro, killing a 14-year-old and four others. At least 21 others were injured, including an eight-year-old and teenagers. The wife and teenage daughter of a local policeman were pulled dead from the rubble, police reported.
Russian drone strike kills teenager in Kyiv night barrage (Image via Getty)
The attack damaged more than a dozen apartment buildings, private houses, and a medical facility. Elsewhere, a Russian drone dropped explosives on a village in the southern Kherson region, killing a man and woman. Shelling in the Kharkiv province in the northeast killed two people in their 60s, and artillery shelling in the Kherson region killed two civilian men.
In response to the attacks, Ukraine’s air force reported that 44 of the Russian drones were shot down, while Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed that its air defence brought down 17 Ukrainian drones over four regions near the border. Despite the intense fighting, Russia has struggled to push Ukrainian forces out of its border region in Kursk, with Ukrainian forces controlling the area almost three months ago.
The latest attacks bring the total number of civilians killed in Ukraine to an alarming number, as the ongoing conflict continues to cause widespread destruction and suffering. The Russian drone strike on the apartment block in Kyiv serves as a stark reminder of the devastating impact of the conflict on innocent civilians, and the need for an immediate end to the violence.
