Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said the assault began shortly after midnight, when Russian forces launched a mix of Iskander ballistic missiles and Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones.
Ukraine’s air-defense crews shot down most of the drones, but multiple missiles slammed into residential districts across the capital, igniting fires in dozens of apartment blocks.
Rescue workers were still combing rubble for survivors on Thursday afternoon, amid reports that mobile phones could be heard ringing beneath the debris; two children are among the missing.
Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko reported that six of the 42 people taken to hospital were children, and confirmed blazes in five of the city’s administrative districts. Authorities in the outlying Bucha district said two women were also wounded when debris struck their homes.
The overnight barrage was not limited to the capital. Regional officials recorded explosions in the Dnipro, Cherkasy, Poltava and Kharkiv regions, where at least six people were hurt. In the western Khmelnytskyi region, two civilians sustained injuries after drone fragments fell on a farm, while air-raid alerts sounded as far south as Zaporizhzhia in the early hours.
Poland’s Operational Command said it detected Russian long-range bombers over western Ukraine and, following established NATO procedures, ordered quick-reaction F-16 fighters into the skies and placed ground-based air-defense and radar units on “maximum readiness.”
No violation of Polish airspace was reported, but Warsaw emphasized that allied aircraft would remain on patrol as long as the threat persisted.
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Source: PAP, Polskie Radio 24