Dozens of people died after Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles and two drones at Ukraine in the early hours of the morning on April 28, according to officials.
The early-morning attacks across the capital city of Kyiv, Uman, and Dnipro, were carried out as Kyiv prepares to launch a spring offensive in an attempt to retake Russian-occupied territory.
Among the injured were a young woman and a 3-year-old child, Borys Filatov, mayor of the central city of Dnipro, said on Telegram, without providing further details.
Ten people also died in strikes on a nine-story residential building in Uman, a city located around 215 kilometers (134 miles) south of Kyiv, according to Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a tweet later on Friday 13 people have been confirmed dead in Uman, adding that two of them are children that can’t be identified.
“The fate of their parents is unknown... The rescuers will work until they make sure that no one else is left under the rubble. We can defeat Russian terror together only - with weapons for Ukraine, the toughest sanctions against the terrorist state, and fair sentences for the killers,” he
wrote.
Separately, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
reported later on Friday that the death toll in Uman had risen to 14 after additional people were pulled from the rubble.
‘Russia Continues Terrorizing Civilians’
The Ukrainian national police said 17 people were wounded and three children were rescued from the rubble.
In Kyiv, the city government said Ukraine’s air force intercepted 11 cruise missiles and two unmanned aerial vehicles, adding that there were no casualties.
Images
shared on social media by Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian government advisor, showed buildings on fire in Dnipro as firefighters worked to put out the flames. Some of the buildings appeared to have suffered extensive damage and were reduced to rubble.
“Russia continues terrorizing civilians,” Gerashchenko said.
Other
video footage shared on Telegram by Ukraine’s State Border Service showed officials removing body bags from a badly damaged apartment building as thick clouds of smoke billowed from the scene.
A resident of one damaged block of flats in Uman, Olga,
told the Reuters news agency that windows were blown out of her apartment before an explosion occurred.
“Everything flew out,” she said.
Ukraine’s Interfax news agency also
said explosions were reported after midnight in the cities of Kremenchuk and Poltava in central Ukraine and in Mykolaiv in the south.
Kremlin Welcomes ‘End of Conflict’
Two people were also wounded in the town of Ukrayinka just south of Kyiv, Reuters
reported.While Russia has launched various attacks on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure since it began its “special military operation” last year, the Kremlin has repeatedly denied deliberately launching attacks targeting civilians.
Russian officials have not yet commented on the latest attacks, which came just one day after the Kremlin said it welcomes “anything that can bring forward the end of the conflict in Ukraine and the achievement of Russia’s goals.”
“As for the very fact of communication, this is the sovereign matter of these countries that pertains exclusively to their bilateral dialogue,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters a day after a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to Russian state news agency
Tass.The latest attacks come shortly after a group of 19 Republican lawmakers urged the Biden administration to
stop spending billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine as the war continues, citing concerns that it could further escalate the conflict.
Biden’s administration has approved over $113 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine since the war began, however, other officials in Washington have raised
concerns that Kyiv may not be fully prepared for its planned Spring offensive and have called for military supplies to be delivered to Ukraine faster.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
