KYIV: Russia unleashed its latest overnight drone strike on Ukraine, targeting the capital Kyiv in an attack that lasted into midday, city officials said on Saturday.

Debris from downed drones struck six city districts, wounding a police officer, damaging residential buildings and starting fires, according to city military administrator Serhiy Popko. A policeman was injured, the administration said.

“Another night. Another air-raid alert. Another drone attack. The armed forces of the Russian Federation attacked Kyiv again according to their old and familiar tactics,” Popko wrote on social media. All the drones aimed at Kyiv had been shot down, he said.

“Unfortunately, the attack by Russian drones caused damage and casualties in various districts of Kyiv,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said. He said that the “constant terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities prove that the pressure on Russia and its accomplices is not enough”.

In the Kyiv region outside the capital, an 82-year-old woman suffered head wounds from shrapnel, officials said. In a village near the southern city of Kherson, a 40-year-old woman was pulled dead from rubble after Russian troops fired artillery and four were injured including three children, the governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.

Ukrainian energy provider DTEK said a high-voltage line powering the capital and two distribution networks in the Kyiv region had been damaged. DTEK said in a statement that electricity had mostly been restored and that repairs were underway.

Correspondents reported hearing explosions in and around the city during an air-raid alert that lasted more than five hours. One drone was seen flying low over the city amid the din of automatic-weapons fire.

Ukraine’s military reported on Saturday that air defences had destroyed 39 out of 71 Russian drones that had been launched, and that another 21 had been “locationally lost”.

Zelenskiy said strikes were also reported in the central Poltava and northeastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions. “This year, we have faced the threat of ‘Shahed’ drones almost every night sometimes in the morning, and even during the day,” he wrote on social media, referring to the Iranian-made attack drones used by Russia.

The health ministry said that a hospital in Kherson was struck, damaging two wards and a laboratory.

Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2024