KYIV (Reuters) – Russia launched a “massive missile” attack overnight on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, killing and wounding people and damaging civilian infrastructure, Ukrainian officials said early on Tuesday.
“There are dead and wounded,” Serhiy Lisak, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region where Kryvyi Rih is located, said on the Telegram messaging app.
“A massive missile attack on Kryvyi Rih.”
Russian air strikes hit several civilian buildings in the city, including a five-storey building, the mayor of Kryvyi Rih, Oleksandr Vilkul, said earlier.
“Likely, there are people under the rubble,” Vilkul said on Telegram.
Reuters could not independently verify the report. Vilkul did not provide any further detail.
Lisak posted a photograph of a five-storey apartment building with all windows blown out and smoke coming out of some.
There was no immediate comment from Russia about the reported strikes. Both Russia and Ukraine deny targeting civilians in the war which Russia launched on its neighbour nearly 16 months ago.
During the earli hours of Tuesday, air raid sirens blared across the whole of Ukraine, with Kyiv’s military officials saying air defence forces destroyed all Russian missiles targeting the Ukrainian capital.
The mayor of the city of Kharkiv in Ukraine’s east said on his Telegram channel that Russian drones hit civilian infrastructure there, striking a warehouse and a utility firm’s building. There was no immediate information about casualties.
(Reporting by Valentyn Origenko, Serhiy Karazy and Lidia Kelly;Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
