KYIV, Ukraine: Russian strikes killed at least 14 people in Ukraine on Friday, officials said, as Moscow launched the latest in an increasing number of daytime barrages.
Moscow has been firing aerial broadsides at Ukraine throughout its more than four-year invasion, mostly at night, but in recent weeks it has stepped up daytime attacks.
The Russian military used more than 500 drones and dozens of missiles in its salvo on Friday, according to the Ukrainian air force.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of intensifying attacks ahead of Catholic Easter on Sunday, “turning what should have been silence in the skies into an Easter escalation”.
Images from Ukrainian emergency services showed damaged residential buildings, with a block of flats ripped open and rubble strewn on a street. The attack killed one person and left eight wounded in the capital region of Kyiv, said regional governor Mykola Kalashnyk.
“Unfortunately, animals were also affected by the attack -- approximately 20 animals died due to damage to a veterinary clinic,” Kalashnyk added.
Some residents of the capital sheltered in the metro or in basements, AFP reporters saw, but many people sat in cafes unfazed by the attacks and despite blaring air raid sirens.
In the Kyiv region, “a drone struck a residential building in Obukhiv, and another attack occurred between a kindergarten and a school in Vyshneve, damaging homes,” said Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko.
Three people were killed in Ukraine´s northern Sumy region, according to authorities. One person was killed in the northwestern Zhytomyr region, while attacks on the frontline Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson regions killed five others, local officials said.
