‘Massive’ Russian strikes kill at least 30 across Ukraine

This handout photograph taken and released by Ukrainian Emergency Service on December 29, 2023, shows firefighters working in a burning building at a site following an attack in Dnipro, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.(Photo by Handout / UKRAINIAN EMERGENCY SERVICE / AFP)
This handout photograph taken and released by Ukrainian Emergency Service on December 29, 2023, shows firefighters working in a burning building at a site following an attack in Dnipro, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.(Photo by Handout / UKRAINIAN EMERGENCY SERVICE / AFP)

Russia launches a massive air attack over Ukraine, killing at least 30 people and wounding scores across the country in the fiercest assault since the first days of the war nearly two years ago.

Schools, a maternity hospital, shopping arcades and blocks of flats were among the buildings hit in the barrage, say Ukrainian officials.

The attacks — during which a Russian missile passed through Polish airspace — trigger international condemnation and fresh promises of military support to Ukraine, which has been fighting off invading Russian troops since late February 2022.

“Today Russia hit us with almost everything it has in its arsenal,” President Volodymyr Zelensky says.

Ukraine’s military estimated Russia had launched 158 missiles and drones on Ukraine and 114 of them had been destroyed.

Air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat tells AFP that this was a “record number” of missiles and “the most massive missile attack” of the war, excluding the early days of constant bombardment.

Russia tried to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses across most major cities, launching a wave of Shahed attack drones followed by missiles of numerous types fired from planes and from Russian-controlled territory.

Interior Minister Igor Klymenko announces on Telegram: “As of now, 30 people have been killed and more than 160 wounded as a result of Russia’s massive attack on Ukrainian territory in the morning.”

Russian authorities say a strike on a residential building in Belgorod, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, had left one dead and four wounded.

A total of 13 missiles were intercepted over the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine and a “drone-type aircraft” was destroyed over the Bryansk region further to the northwest, according to Russian authorities.

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