Kyiv mayor says Russian drones, missiles trigger fires, injure eight

KYIV – Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital Kyiv early on May 24 with drones and missiles, triggering fires, strewing debris in districts throughout the city and injuring at least eight people, the city’s mayor said.

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

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said two residents required hospital treatment and that air defence units were in action.

Pictures posted online showed smoke billowing from the top of one block of flats and flames leaping from part of another as emergency crews trained water on it. An orange-red glow lit up the city as plumes of smoke wafted across the horizon.

Mr Klitschko said 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 was on fire in the area, as was one non-residential building.

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

Officials also reported a fire in Obolon, in the city’s northern suburbs, and fallen debris on a shopping centre in the same area. They said drone fragments hit the ground in a number of other widely separated neighbourhoods.

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

The overnight strikes followed several days of Ukrainian drone attacks – about 800 attacks – on targets inside Russia, including the capital Moscow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov vowed on May 23 to respond to those attacks. REUTERS