An apartment building in Kiev was hit on Thursday evening in a new Russian attack, wounding two people, said Ukrainian authorities, who claimed to have shot down 24 of 28 drones launched overnight.
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This is the first incident of its kind in months in the Ukrainian capital. While Kiev is regularly targeted by Russian drone and missile attacks, most are shot down by air defence.
The Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement that, “During the night of December 22, the Russian occupation forces attacked with 28 Shahed drones.”
The press release stated that 24 Iranian-made drones that Moscow regularly uses in these attacks against its neighbor “were shot down.”
In Kiev, the air alarm went off late in the evening. A short time later, residents heard loud explosions. The city council initially announced that air defense was operating in the city, calling on residents to remain in shelters.
The head of the presidential administration, Andrei Ermak, wrote on the Telegram application: “An apartment building in Kiev was struck by a witness.”
The city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, added on the Telegram application that the accident occurred in the Solomyansky district in the southwest of the capital, noting that there were “flames on the upper floors” of the building.
He added that a man was taken to the hospital in this neighborhood, while another received medical treatment at the site, without providing further details.
The city’s military administration posted pictures on a telegram of apartments whose windows were shattered due to the explosions.
She claimed it was not a drone strike, but rather fragments from a downed drone ensuring the fire could be quickly extinguished.
In the Golosevsky district (south of the city), fragments of a destroyed drone fell on a high-rise building, without causing any casualties, according to the military administration on the Telegram application.
Shortly after, Mr. Klitschko announced that debris from another drone shot down by air defense had fallen on a private house in the Darnitsky district east of the city, causing a fire.
