Four killed in Russian air strike on Ukrainian cities

[January 23, 2024]  By Olena Harmash and Pavel Polityuk

KYIV (Reuters) -Russia unleashed a mass air strike on Ukraine on Tuesday, local officials said, killing at least four people and wounding more than 60 others.

The early-morning missile attack mostly targeted the country's two largest cities, the capital Kyiv and Kharkiv in the east.

Three people were killed and 42 wounded in Kharkiv in strikes on apartment buildings, Governor Oleh Synehubov said on Telegram.

Rescue workers were digging through rubble to search for survivors, Mayor Ihor Terekhov told local television. He said 30 apartment buildings had been damaged in the strikes.

A gas pipeline in Kharkiv was also damaged and was being repaired, state energy firm Naftogaz said.

In Kyiv, Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said 20 people including three children had been wounded across at least three districts, and that several apartments and non-residential buildings had caught fire.

At one site, rescuers tended to dazed and groaning victims as workers swept away debris and broken glass.

Some of the damage had occurred next to the United Nations office in Kyiv, resident coordinator Denise Brown said in a statement.

The city's military administration said doctors were still fighting for one victim's life.

Reuters journalists reported hearing several waves of explosions in and around Kyiv and saw burning debris falling from the sky.

"Strong explosions, our house...was shaking," lawmaker Iryna Geraschenko wrote on Telegram.

One person was also killed in the southeastern city of Pavlohrad, the regional governor said.

A building is damaged in an air strike amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Solomyanskyi district in Kyiv, Ukraine in this still image released on January 23, 2024. Kyiv City Military Administration/Handout via REUTERS.

Ukraine's air force said the military had destroyed 21 out of 41 missiles of various types fired by Russia.

A senior Ukrainian general, Serhiy Naiev, posted a video which he said depicted air defence forces shooting down a Russian missile with a machinegun.

Kyiv has repeatedly called for higher quantities of advanced air defence systems from its Western partners as it struggles to defend itself from the combined Russian strikes.

"The world must understand that this terror can only be stopped by force," the head of Ukraine's presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram.

Officials in the northern region of Sumy also said critical infrastructure had been damaged by a missile strike on the city of Shostka.

Russia, which did not immediately comment on the attack, has carried out regular air strikes on cities and civilian infrastructure far behind the front line of its nearly two-year-old war in Ukraine.

Moscow had accused Kyiv on Sunday of shelling the Russian-occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, killing 27 people. Ukrainian forces said Russia bore responsibility for the attack.

(Reporting by Olena Harmash, Pavel Polityuk, Dan Peleschuk, Max Hunder and Gleb Garanich; Writing by Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Michael Perry and Angus MacSwan)

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