Russian and Ukrainian strikes kill 12, including three children, as both sides intensify long-range attacks on civilian areas
KYIV: Russian artillery and aerial attacks killed nine people in Ukraine on Tuesday, including a child. Moscow said a Ukrainian drone strike on a house in Russia killed another child and his parents, bringing the day’s total fatalities to 12.
The strikes mark a continued escalation in the long-range drone and missile attacks that have characterised the conflict in recent months. Russian shelling in the southern city of Kherson killed four people and wounded several others, according to regional official Oleksandr Prokudin.
Prokudin likened the shelling to “hell,” posting video showing bodies strewn on the street. Earlier, a Russian drone attack on a passenger bus in the frontline city of Nikopol killed four people, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“The Russians continue their deliberate terror against people in Nikopol and other cities and communities near the front,” Zelensky added. Regional officials posted photos showing a yellow mini-bus ripped open in the attack.
Nikopol lies on the banks of the Dnipro river, which forms a de facto front line in southern Ukraine. A separate overnight Russian drone strike on the Dnipropetrovsk region killed an 11-year-old boy and wounded five others when a house caught fire.
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone struck a residential building in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow. Governor Alexander Avdeev said the attack killed a boy born in 2014 and two adults, with the couple’s five-year-old daughter hospitalised with burns.
The region is more than 500 kilometres from the fighting in eastern Ukraine. The strikes come as both sides target energy infrastructure, with Moscow aiming to dent Ukrainian resolve and Kyiv targeting Russian energy revenues.
Russia’s invasion has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions from their homes. It remains the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.
