(Kyiv) Kyiv was the target of a Russian drone attack overnight from Friday to Saturday, while new explosions were heard on Saturday afternoon in the Ukrainian capital and other regions were affected.
Posted at 8:13 a.m.
“Unfortunately, the Russian drone attack caused damage and casualties in several districts of Kyiv,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“The constant terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities prove that the pressure on Russia and its accomplices is not enough,” he added.
AFP journalists heard new explosions in Kyiv on Saturday afternoon, after an air raid alert was issued.
PHOTO SERGEI SUPINSKY, AGENCE France-PRESSE
People take shelter in an underground metro station during an air strike in Kyiv, November 2, 2024.
In the morning, the Ukrainian Air Force said it had shot down 39 of 71 drones launched from Russia overnight.
The drones targeted the region surrounding the capital, the border sector of Sumy (north-east of the country) as well as the central regions of Kirovograd and Poltava.
Twenty-one drones were lost and five were returned to Russia, the air force said, adding that the drone attack continued.
She said debris from downed drones damaged houses and buildings in four regions, including Kyiv, Sumy and the area of the port city of Odessa (Southwest).
PHOTO GLEB GARANICH, REUTERS
A Russian drone flies in the sky above Kyiv after a Russian drone strike, November 2, 2024.
According to the Kyiv military administration, debris from drones shot down by air defenses fell in six neighborhoods of the capital, damaging buildings and cars and starting several fires in buildings which were extinguished.
A police officer was injured, according to the administration. In the Kyiv region outside the capital, an 82-year-old woman was injured in the head by shrapnel.
In a village near the southern city of Kherson, a 40-year-old woman was pulled from the rubble after artillery fire from Russian troops and four people were injured, including three children, the governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said.
The Health Ministry said a hospital in Kherson was hit, damaging two wards and a laboratory. The medical staff and patients, who were able to take shelter, were not injured.
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Saturday that his troops on the ground were “repelling one of the most powerful Russian offensives since the start of the large-scale invasion”.
Moscow claims the capture of two villages in the East
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Saturday the capture of two new villages in eastern Ukraine, where its troops are advancing rapidly, according to a press release.
The forces “liberated” the large village of Kurakhivka, close to the industrial town of Kurakhove, in the eastern Donetsk region, which Russia is seeking to take, the ministry said.
It also claimed the capture of the small village of Pershotravneve in the Kharkiv region, close to the eastern Luhansk region.
The Russian army took 478 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in October, a record since the first weeks of the conflict in March 2022, according to an AFP analysis of data from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW). ).
Agence France-Presse
