Kyiv, Ukraine —
A major Russian attack targeted the Ukrainian capital Kiev overnight, killing at least seven people and injuring at least 44 others, Ukrainian authorities said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had launched more than 1,560 drones into Ukraine since the beginning of Wednesday, making it the largest airstrike on Ukraine in two days since the start of the war. President Zelenskiy announced on Thursday that 56 more missiles had been launched overnight.
Air raid sirens continued to sound for about 11 hours into the night Wednesday, according to CNN’s ground team.
At least six people were killed in an attack on a nine-story residential building in Kiev, emergency authorities said. Authorities pulled several bodies from the rubble in the hours after the attack, including that of a 12-year-old girl.
The state emergency department said more than a dozen people were reported missing, and there may still be residents trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.
“I heard a loud explosion. I ran out to the kitchen and saw people running around the garden looking for help. Then I ran out of the building and found the front door was gone,” Olena Sundowska, 38, a resident of the building, told CNN. “It was scary. It was very stressful because I was worried about my children,” the mother of three added.
Another resident, 76-year-old Polina, said she woke up to find her balcony window had been blown out.
“I never imagined that the damage would be this serious. When I came out to the garden, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” said Polina, who asked to be identified only by her first name. “We don’t have a proper air raid shelter here. The air raid shelter is not in our building, it’s just in a nearby building, so we don’t go down anywhere[underground].”
Another man in Kiev also died in hospital from injuries sustained in the gas station attack, police said.
Kiev’s mayor described it as “the largest attack on the capital by the enemy” and declared tomorrow a day of mourning. President Zelenskiy said the two-day air barrage came after Russia had “stockpiled drones and missiles for a period of time and deliberately timed the attacks so that the scale of the attack was large and the challenge for our air defense was as great as possible.” He added that Ukraine was preparing a response.
Meanwhile, at least 28 people were injured in Thursday morning’s attack on the city of Kharkiv, President Zelenskiy said. Two people were also injured in the Odesa area.
A wave of large-scale Russian attacks also targeted other regions, including Poltava and Zaporizhia, damaging some energy and rail infrastructure.
Energy company DTEK said in a statement that a missile and drone attack in Kiev damaged an electrical substation and high-voltage power lines. According to Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railways), a locomotive collided in the Kharkiv region, but the locomotive crew was able to evacuate in time.
