Ukraine war: Children die in a new missile attack on Kiev

Ukrainian officials said two children and an adult were killed, and more than a dozen people were wounded, in a new overnight missile attack on Kiev.

Russia, the Ukrainian capital, is subject to regular air attacks with missiles and drones.

The latest attacks took place in the eastern Dnipro and Dnipro regions.

Ukrainian officials said the details of the dead and injured were based on preliminary information.

The Kiev city military department wrote on Telegram that one of the dead children was between 5 and 6 years old, while the other was 12 or 13 years old. Both were in the Desnyanskyi district.

The attack is the fourth this week, and follows 17 attacks on the Ukrainian capital throughout the month of May – most of which took place at night, although at least one attack took place during the day.

Pictures released by the military authorities showed rescue teams tending to people, as well as damaged buildings.

In a number of early morning posts on Telegram, Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said that “a series of explosions” occurred in the city, and that rescuers were dealing with fallen debris and fires.

He said 14 people were injured – nine of whom were taken to hospital.

Meanwhile, Russian-backed officials in the occupied part of eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk region said five people were killed and 19 others wounded in Ukrainian shelling of a poultry farm on Wednesday.

And the governor of the Belgorod region in western Russia, which borders Ukraine, said Thursday morning that at least two people were injured in an attack on the town of Shchebykino, which he blamed on Ukrainian forces.

“The night is tense for Shchepkino again. Ukrainian forces have been shelling the city for an hour,” Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on his Telegram channel.

In recent weeks, Russia — which launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — has used kamikaze drones as well as an array of cruise and ballistic missiles to attack targets in Ukraine.

Kiev has been heavily targeted, and analysts believe Moscow is trying to deplete and destroy Ukraine’s air defenses ahead of the long-anticipated counterattack, which the Ukrainian government has been planning for months.