KHERSON - Russian shelling of residential areas in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson left at least three people dead, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, while a strike on Kharkiv killed one person, according to the regional governor.

“Today, the Russian army has been shelling Kherson atrociously all day,” Mr Zelensky said in his evening address.

“Two women, nurses, were wounded in the hospital. As of now, there are reports of six wounded and three dead.”

In eastern Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, the governor of the regional military administration said a Russian strike hit “a four-storey residential building”.

“Three victims received minor injuries. Unfortunately, an elderly woman died... The building was partially destroyed,” Mr Oleh Synehubov said on Telegram. “Her husband was nearby when the strike occurred and by a miracle suffered no serious injuries.”

Mr Synehubov told the Suspilne media outlet that rescue teams were searching for another missing elderly woman who could be under rubble left by the impact. “The fourth floor has been destroyed. This is an old building,” he was quoted as saying. “We understand that the second and third floors were heavily damaged. The entire section of the building is no longer fit for habitation.”

Mr Anatoly Torianyk, deputy head of Kharkiv rescue services, said the building was made of wood. 

The front in southern Ukraine has been considerably quieter recently than in the east, with Moscow withdrawing from Kherson city in November last year.

But the key city and regional capital of the eponymous Kherson region is still subject to frequent Russian shelling.

“Enemy artillery pounded the city’s residential areas,” the Kherson regional administration said on social media.

The attacks left three dead, two men and one woman, and six others wounded, the administration said.

It added that civilian facilities were damaged, including the Kherson Regional Clinical Hospital, a school, a bus station, a post office, a bank and residential buildings.

Among the injured were a nurse and a cafeteria worker of the hospital, who both sustained “moderate” injuries.

In the Zaporizhzhia region, where fighting intensified in recent days after several months of a stagnant front, Moscow-appointed officials said Kyiv struck a railway bridge, killing four people.

Ukraine on Sunday carried out an “attack from a Himars multiple rocket launcher on a railway bridge across the Molochnaya river”, the Russian-installed head of the region Yevgeny Balitsky said on social media.

“Four people from the railways brigade were killed, five were injured,” Mr Balitsky added.

The bridge is located in a village north of the Russian-controlled city of Melitopol and was undergoing repairs, according to Balitsky.

Russia claims to have annexed the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions along with two other Ukraine regions in the east, but does not fully control these territories. AFP