Three people were killed and two more were injured in an overnight Russian aerial bomb strike on the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, regional officials said on Monday.
“Monday morning in Zaporizhzhia began with explosions and fires”, Zaporizhzhia Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram. “The Russians dropped at least five aerial bombs on the city”.
According to Fedorov, Russia launched the attack at around 4:30am local time and “terrorised the city” for around 40 minutes.
Strikes were recorded at 10 locations across the city, Fedorov said, causing damage to 15 apartment blocks and 10 private houses, as well as a number of non-residential premises.
“None of the targets had any connection to military infrastructure. This was a deliberate act of terror against a peaceful city and its residents,” Fedorov said.
One person was also injured in an overnight Russian drone attack on the northeastern city of Sumy, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said.
Ukraine’s Air Force said that Russia launched a total of 141 drones at the country overnight, with air defences downing 132 of them.
In Russian-annexed Crimea, meanwhile, Kremlin-installed governor Sergey Aksyonov said that three people were killed and 16 more injured in a Ukrainian drone strike on a sanatorium in the resort town of Foros on the peninsula’s south coast on Sunday evening.
Russia’s Defence Ministry called the strike a “deliberate terrorist attack on civilian targets” in an area with “no military facilities”, with Aksyonov adding that a school had been damaged in the attack. Ukrainian sources, however, reported that the sanatorium is linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and frequently hosts meetings of Kremlin officials.
While Kyiv did not make any official comment on the reported sanatorium strike, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence said its forces had attacked Russian military targets in Crimea overnight, destroying three Mi-8 helicopters, a radar station and two Beriev Be-12 Chaika amphibious aircraft.
In the western Russian city of Belgorod, near the border with Ukraine, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said two people were injured when a Ukrainian drone detonated near the city administration building early on Monday morning.
According to Russia’s Defence Ministry, air defences intercepted a total of 114 Ukrainian drones launched at nine Russian regions and annexed Crimea overnight, as well as over the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.