Kharkiv, 7 March: A Russian missile strike on a residential apartment block in Kharkiv has killed at least 10 people, including children, and injured several others, Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday, as Russia launched a large-scale overnight assault across the country.
The missile struck a five-storey residential building in the eastern Ukrainian city, causing major destruction and trapping residents under the rubble. Rescue teams continued to search the debris for survivors amid fears that more people could still be trapped.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia carried out a widespread attack overnight using 29 missiles and around 480 drones targeting multiple regions of the country.
“There may still be people under the rubble,” Zelensky said, adding that emergency services were working at the site to rescue victims and clear debris.
Local officials said at least 16 people were injured in the Kharkiv strike, including several children. Among those killed were a 65-year-old woman, a 40-year-old man and a 13-year-old girl, according to Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov.
The attack also damaged seven apartment buildings, electricity distribution lines and nearby administrative structures in the city. Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov said some of the injured included two boys aged six and eleven and a 17-year-old girl.
Ukraine’s air defence systems intercepted a large portion of the incoming weapons, shooting down 19 missiles and 453 drones, officials said. Many of the drones used in the attack were Iranian-designed Shahed drones frequently deployed by Russian forces.
The overnight strikes triggered air raid alerts across Ukraine and caused damage to infrastructure in several regions. Energy facilities were targeted in Kyiv, Khmelnytskyi and Chernivtsi regions, while rail infrastructure in the Zhytomyr region was also affected.
Casualties were also reported elsewhere. In the Sumy region, a 24-year-old man was killed when a drone struck his car. In the Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian forces launched around 20 attacks using drones, rockets and artillery in the Nikopol district, according to regional official Oleksandr Ganzha.
Neighboring Poland scrambled military aircraft to protect its airspace in areas close to the Ukrainian border as a precaution during the large-scale strikes.
Zelensky urged Ukraine’s international partners to continue their support, saying Russia was still targeting civilian areas and critical infrastructure.
“There must be a response from partners to these brutal attacks on life,” the Ukrainian president said.
The latest wave of attacks comes as diplomatic efforts to end the war remain stalled, with the conflict continuing to intensify more than two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
