Kyiv mayor says 8 wounded in ‘massive’ Russian drone and missile attack

Russia attacks Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with drones and missiles, triggering fires, strewing debris in districts throughout the city and injuring at least eight people, the city’s mayor says.

Reuters witnesses see and hear successive waves of drones flying over Kyiv, and a series of explosions jolted the city.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko says two residents require hospital treatment and that air defense units are in action.

Klitschko says fragments from one drone struck the top floor of an apartment building in the Solomyanskyi district on the west bank of the Dnipro River, which bisects the city. One apartment building is on fire in the area as is one non-residential building.

Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, says a fire also broke out on two floors of an apartment building in Dniprovskyi district on the opposite bank.

Officials also report a fire in Obolon in the city’s northern suburbs and fallen debris on a shopping center in the same area. They say drone fragments hit the ground in a number of other widely separated neighborhoods.

An air alert remains in effect more than two hours after it was first declared.

The overnight strikes follow several days of Ukrainian drone attacks — some 800 attacks — on targets inside Russia, including capital Moscow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had vowed on Friday to respond to those attacks.