Fresh Russian bombardment of Ukraine’s capital kills at least 3 people

KYIV: Russian forces began June with a fresh aerial bombardment of Kyiv on Thursday, killing at least three people and wounding others, authorities said.

Following up on a reported 17 attacks on the Ukrainian capital in May, mostly using drones, Russian forces hit the capital in the early morning with ground-launched missiles, damaging apartment buildings, a medical clinic, a water pipeline and a car.

Kyiv City Administration reported three people were killed, two children among them, and 10 people were wounded. The casualty toll was the most from one attack on Kyiv in the past month.

After a woman was killed watching an aerial attack from her balcony earlier this week, Kyiv authorities urged residents to heed warning sirens and stay in shelters or other safe locations.

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Ukraine’s air defenses have become increasingly effective at intercepting Russian drones and missiles, but the resulting debris sometimes causes fires and injuries in buildings and on the ground. Preliminary indications were that Kyiv’s air defenses intercepted all incoming weapons early Thursday, and that the latest deaths and injuries were caused by falling debris.

In Desnianskyi district, the debris fell on a hospital and a nearby multistory building. In another district, Dniprovskyi, a residential building was damaged by debris, parked cars caught fire, and debris fell onto the roadway.

On Wednesday, Russian forces carried out three aerial attacks over the south of Kherson region, along with missile and heavy artillery strikes on other parts of the region.

In earlier developments:

Russian troops around the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant attacked the city of Nikopol and surrounding villages on the bank of Dnieper River with drones and heavy artillery, damaging several residences.

Authorities in Russia’s southern region of Krasnodar, which borders the annexed Crimean Peninsula, reported that drones crashed into two oil refineries. One briefly caught fire and another didn’t sustain damage, officials said. They didn’t explicitly blame Ukraine.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, announced the evacuation of children from two areas that have often come under Ukrainian shelling.

Russian-installed authorities of the partially occupied Luhansk region said Ukrainian armed forces shelled the village of Karpaty, killing five people and wounding 19.

In another apparent cross-border attack, two construction workers in Russia’s Kursk region were injured during shelling from Ukraine, the regional governor, Roman Starovoit, reported. He said on Telegram channel the two were working in the Korenevsky district “on a defensive line along the state border.”

The Russian Defense Ministry said the Ukrainian Navy’s landing ship Yurii Olefirenko was destroyed in a strike Monday on the Odesa harbor. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. The Russian Defense Ministry said the Yurii Olefirenko was the last Ukrainian Navy ship that remained in service, but this claim couldn’t be independently verified.