KYIV (Reuters) -Russia has attacked the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine for a second consecutive night, injuring three people, sparking fires at industrial buildings and damaging two kindergartens, Ukrainian officials said early on Monday.
The attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, lasted most of the night and hit the city’s largest and oldest district, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
“Five industrial buildings of one of the research and production enterprises were damaged,” Terekhov said on Telegram.
Emergency crews said they battled a large fire which spanned 3,900 square meters after the strike. The drone assault on the city also damaged 11 apartment buildings, Terekhov said.
The attack came a week after a U.S.-brokered partial ceasefire on strikes on energy and Black Sea infrastructure. Both sides have accused each other of breaking the moratorium.
The Ukrainian air force said it shot down 57 of 131 drones launched by Russia during the overnight attack that also used two Iskander-M ballistic missiles.
Another 45 drones did not reach their targets, likely due to electronic countermeasures, it said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Russia had fired more than 1,000 drones over the past week and he called for a response from the U.S. and other allies. Russia said Ukrainian drones attacked its energy facilities last week.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and has waged a bloody and brutal three-year war. Both sides deny targeting civilians, saying their attacks are aimed at destroying each other’s infrastructure crucial to war efforts.
Over the weekend a Russian drone strike on Kharkiv killed two people and wounded 35, a Ukrainian official said.
Oleh Sinehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region, said on Monday that the overnight attacks followed a Sunday guided aerial bomb strike on the city of Kupiansk that left five injured and damaged an apartment building.
Kupiansk, east of Kharkiv, was seized by Russia early in the invasion of Ukraine and recaptured by Ukrainian troops later that year. It has now come under new, intense Russian pressure.
There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the attacks.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Anastasiia Malenko in Kyiv; Editing by Michael Perry and Gareth Jones)
