Russia unleashed a wave of drone strikes on Ukraine overnight Friday, killing at least four people and injuring 35 in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, regional officials said.
It marked the fourth such attack on the city this week. The drones pounded residential neighborhoods, torching several multistory apartment buildings and sparking multiple fires.
Rescue crews worked through the night, combing through rubble in a desperate search for survivors.
“As of this morning, unfortunately, there are already four dead. The body of one more person killed by the Russian aggressor has been removed from the rubble,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on the Telegram app. “We also have 35 wounded.”
The Prosecutor General’s Office said prosecutors were working to identify those who were killed. It also said in a statement that three children were among those injured in the drone attacks.
Ukrainian air defense units and mobile drone-hunting groups shot down 42 of 78 Russian drones overnight across Ukraine, the air force said. The military also used electronic warfare to redirect or spoof another 22 drones, it said.
Kharkiv has been subject to nearly nightly Russian drone strikes over the past week. In previous attacks, the city’s industrial sites and infrastructure were damaged, officials said.
The city withstood the advance of Russian troops through Ukraine, including toward the capital, Kyiv, in the early weeks of the February 2022 invasion.
As Russian forces were driven back from the capital and subsequently focused on Ukraine’s east, Kharkiv became a frequent target of air attacks.
The central Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv regions, as well as the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, also suffered damage from drone attacks, the Ukrainian military and regional officials said.
In the city of Dnipro, three people were injured, and an infrastructure facility and several administrative and residential buildings were damaged in the surrounding region, the governor said.
The governor said 13 drones were shot down over the Dnipropetrovsk region overnight.
Two more people were injured in the central Kyiv region, officials said.
In southeastern Zaporizhzhia, at least seven drones hit targets in the region, injuring one person, the regional governor said.
