Children among nine dead in Russia strike on Ukraine

Image source, DSNS Ukraine emergency service

Image caption, The station in the centre of Dnipro was damaged in the Russian attack

Two Russian strikes in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region have killed nine people, including three children, officials say.

The station in the main city Dnipro came under attack, and several homes were hit further east in Synelnykove.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack highlighted the need for every city to have adequate air defences.

In a separate strike, Ukraine said that for the first time it had downed a long-range bomber in Russian territory.

According to Ukraine’s interior ministry, two children aged six and eight were among six people killed when private homes were targeted by Russian strikes on the town of Synelnykove. A third child died later in hospital and several other people were reported wounded.

In the regional capital Dnipro another two people were killed and 20 were wounded when a five-storey building was hit.

Rescue services were continuing to search the rubble and warned that the number of victims would rise, the ministry added. A maternity hospital also came under fire.

Ukraine has for months warned that it is running low on weapons capable of bringing down Russian missiles and drones, and Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has spoken of an “urgent, critical need” for fresh military aid.

However, the air force in Kyiv declared that it had brought down a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber that was being used to fire supersonic Kh-22 cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities from the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Unverified video showed a plane on fire spiralling out of control to the ground. Russia’s defence ministry blamed a technical malfunction after the bomber had carried out a “combat task”.

Stavropol regional governor Vladimir Vladimirov said only that the plane had crashed in a Russian field some distance north of the main city and two pilots had been found alive. A third crew member was killed and rescue services were looking for a fourth.

Ukrainian air force chief Lt Gen Mykola Oleschuk said Russia had fired six Kh-22 cruise missiles overnight and two of them had been destroyed for the first time.

Image source, Vladimir Vladimirov

Image caption, Regional governor Vladimir Vladimirov said the plane had gone down in a district to the north of Stavropol