About 27 locations in the capital were hit during several waves of attacks throughout the night, and residential buildings, educational institutions, and critical infrastructure facilities were damaged, officials said.
A ballistic missile struck a nine-story residential building in Kyiv‘s Solomianskyi district, wiping out a whole section of it, which was flattened into a pile of debris.
Emergency workers were combing through the rubble and dousing the flames with hoses. They used a crane to lower a wounded elderly woman in a stretcher out of the window of a flat in an adjacent section of the building.
“I have never seen anything like this before. It is simply horrific. When they started pulling people out, and everyone was cut up, elderly people and children… I do not know how long they can continue to torment us, ordinary people,” said Viktoriia Vovchenko, 57, who lives nearby.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said 14 people were killed in Kyiv and one more in Odesa in southern Ukraine. Nearly a hundred people were injured in the capital and the nearby region, Odesa, and Chernihiv in the north, officials said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the dead in the capital included a 62-year-old U.S. citizen, who died from shrapnel wounds.
Ukraine has also launched drones deep into Russia, although its attacks have not caused similar damage to civilian targets. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had intercepted and destroyed 147 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory, including the Moscow region, overnight.