Russian missiles target Ukraine’s capital, kill 3

Associated Press

Kyiv, (Ukraine): Russia launched a predawn missile barrage on Ukraine’s capital Thursday, killing 3 people including a 9-year-old and her mother, officials said, and damaging apartment buildings, schools and a children’s hospital. It was the highest casualty toll from a single attack on Kyiv over the past month.

A 33-year-old woman died as she and others waited to enter a locked Kyiv air raid shelter, leaving her and others at the mercy of falling missile fragments, according to her husband. Officials ordered an investigation into what happened. The latest Russian attack, using what Ukrainian officials said were short-range Iskander ground-launched missiles, coincided with events scheduled in Kyiv to celebrate International Children’s Day.

Those events were canceled. Ukrainian air defenses shot down all 10 cruise and ballistic missiles launched by the Kremlin’s forces, but falling debris caused damage and casualties on the ground, wounding 16 people, according to authorities. Russia has kept up a steady barrage on the Ukrainian capital and other parts of the country in recent weeks as Kyiv readies what it says is a counteroffensive to push back Moscow’s troops, 15 months after their fullscale invasion.

Kyiv was the target of drone and missile attacks on 17 days last month. Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said one child was in hospital after the attack. “Children’s Day has to be about safe childhood, summer, life,” she tweeted. “But today it is about new crimes of (Russia) against children.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that the dead included a 9-year-old girl, her mother and another woman.

At the Kyiv air raid shelter that was locked, Yaroslav Riabchuk said he and his wife of 17 years, Natalia, were outside with others when he ran around the back of the building to summon the guard in charge. “I ran, but then an explosion happened,” Riabchuk said. “Shattered glass started falling, and I knew I had to run back. When I returned, it was over. There was a lot of blood, women, children.”