UKRAINE HAS SAID it has downed 20 Russian attack drones and two cruise missiles in an overnight attack that killed one and wounded at least four in the capital Kyiv.

“We have a successful air defense operation,” air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat told national television.

“20 Shaheds were destroyed – all those flying were downed.”

The 20 Iran-made Shahed attack drones were destroyed “mainly in the Kyiv region”, Ukraine’s air force said in a separate statement on Telegram.

The drones had “entered the capital from different directions”, Kyiv’s military administration said on Telegram earlier, adding air defences had destroyed “about a dozen” in the city’s airspace.

Falling debris was reported in five city districts, it said, adding that a 19-year-old woman and a 23-year-old man had been hospitalised with shrapnel wounds.

Two people were wounded in Darnytsky district “as a result of falling debris”, Sergiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, wrote on Telegram.

It was unclear if they were the same two people.

Emergency services were responding to calls in Solomyansky, Shevchenkivsky, Podilsky and Darnytsky districts following “explosions in the capital”, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said earlier.

In Podilsky district, firefighters discovered the “body of one dead person”, Klitschko posted on Telegram.

Klitschko also said two people had been “hospitalised” in Darnytsky district after falling debris damaged a residential building.

It was not clear if they were the same two people mentioned by the military administration.

Two others in Shevchenkivsky district had been treated at the scene, Klitschko said.

Fires broke out in an apartment building in Shevchenkivsky and in a non-residential building in Podilsky district, he said, adding emergency services were on site.

A picture posted on Telegram by Kyiv’s military administration showed a room in a high-rise building with part of its wall blown out, in what it said was the result of falling debris in Darnytsky district.

Ukrainian air defences also destroyed two Kalibr cruise missiles during the night, Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram.

It said an Iskander-M ballistic missile had also been launched from Crimea, a southern peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Information was “still being clarified” regarding the missile launch, it said.

© AFP 2023