Air raid sirens sounded in Ukraine’s two largest cities just before dawn on Tuesday, as the Russian military again targeted residential areas with barrage of missiles, killing five and injuring dozens.
Local officials said many residents of Kyiv and Kharkiv fled to underground shelters as missiles struck their cities.
At least 21 missiles targeted Kyiv, the capital, were shot down, including five ballistic ones, officials said.
Tuesday’s attacks appeared to be a continuation of Moscow’s strategy of striking Ukrainian locations that are seemingly without military targets.
A similar early morning strike earlier this month killed at least five and injured more than 100, Ukrainian officials said at the time.
Russia had days earlier undertaken its largest overnight aerial assaults on Ukraine since the war began, killing at least 31 in residential areas.
“I strongly condemn yet another indiscriminate attack” by Russia, Secretary General of the Council of Europe Marija Pejčinović Burić said Tuesday, adding that the “barbaric acts have to stop.”
“At least one person was killed in Kyiv, where missiles struck two high-rise buildings.
“Other buildings were damaged and rubble covered parked cars.
“This is Russia’s real intentions: the daily terror of civilians,” Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko said.
Officials said another person was killed in a strike in Pavlohrad, in the Dnipropetrovsk oblast, and three others were killed in Kharkiv, where an apartment building was destroyed.
The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said rescue workers were searching early Tuesday in Kharkiv for people trapped under the rubble at several locations, including an educational facility.
Twenty-seven people had been pulled from the ruins of destroyed buildings, the service said.
Officials said at least 42 people, including four children, were injured in Kharkiv.
“A total of more than 60 people were injured, Olena Zelenska.
“We must find the power and fight. Promises do not protect us, weapons do,” Ukraine’s first lady, said.
