Fresh drone and missile attacks in Ukraine and Russia kill seven, including three children, as cross-border strikes target civilians and infrastructure
KYIV: Russian aerial attacks killed four people in Ukraine, including a child, while a Ukrainian drone strike hit a house in Russia, killing a child and his parents.
Local officials from both sides reported the casualties, marking another deadly day in the more than four-year-old conflict.
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone strike on a residential building killed a boy and two adults in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow, according to Governor Alexander Avdeev.
The couple’s five-year-old daughter was hospitalised with burns from the attack, which occurred over 500 kilometres from the front line in eastern Ukraine.
In Ukraine, a Russian drone attack on a passenger bus in the frontline city of Nikopol killed at least three people and wounded 12 others.
“The bus was pulling up to the stop — there were people both on board and at the stop,” wrote the head of the region’s military administration, Oleksandr Ganzha, on social media.
He posted photos showing a yellow mini-bus ripped open and the bloodied remains of those killed strewn around the street, calling it “a deliberate act of terror against civilians.”
Nikopol, with a pre-war population of around 100,000, lies on the banks of the Dnipro river, which forms a de facto front line in southern Ukraine.
Moscow’s army has been regularly attacking civilians in their cars or on public transport with drones over the Dnipro waterway.
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, Governor Ganzha said earlier.
The two sides have intensified deadly long-range drone and missile attacks in recent months, mainly targeting energy infrastructure.
Moscow aims to dent Ukrainian resolve, while Kyiv targets Russian energy revenues in the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.