By Valentyn Ogirenko
KYIV, July 6 (Reuters) – Russian missiles and drones struck Kyiv early on Monday, killing at least nine people and heavily damaging apartment blocks and other buildings, officials said, just a few days after the deadliest assault on the Ukrainian capital this year.
Rescue crews were pulling residents from buildings shattered by the overnight barrage, said Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko on Telegram.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s military administration, said the death toll in the capital rose to nine, with 46 people wounded throughout the city.
“Unfortunately, this is not the final information,” he said, as rescue operations continued.
At least 15 residential buildings had been damaged or destroyed in the attack, including a nine-storey block in the historic Podilskyi district, emergency services said.
Rescuers used a ladder truck to get to people trapped on the upper floors of that building, which had been largely destroyed from the fifth level, they said.
Rescuers were also looking for residents in a 21-storey residential block in the district. Tkachenko said four residential buildings had been struck in the Podilskyi district alone.
The new attack came days after 31 people had been killed in a Russian attack on the capital in the early hours of Thursday – the deadliest strike on the city this year.
Klitschko said two people had died in the eastern Darnytskyi district, where fragments struck a 25-storey apartment building, and rescue teams were working to free residents trapped on upper floors.
He also said a fire had broken out in a 30-storey building in Darnytskyi, where residents were being evacuated.
Reuters witnesses reported a series of explosions in and around the capital and said air defences were in action against Russian drones.
Reuters pictures showed rescue teams clambering over rubble by a shattered apartment building and whisking people out on stretchers as smoke wafted through the air.
Another person was killed and a further 15 injured in the surrounding Kyiv region, the regional governor Mykola Kalashnyk said.
The southern Black Sea port of Odesa also came under attack, the head of city administration Serhiy Lysak said, with at least one person injured.
Ukraine’s neighbour Poland, a NATO and EU member, briefly scrambled fighter jets as a preventive measure.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had earlier warned residents of an imminent Russian attack.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Anna Pruchnicka; Editing by Michael Perry and Lincoln Feast.)
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