KYIV: Two women were killed by Russian artillery in the southern Ukrainian city of Nikopol on Wednesday, local authorities said, after another night of Russian drones attacks.
Russian forces have systemically shelled Ukrainian towns and villages near the front line, reducing even large towns to rubble.
“This morning, the Russian army shelled Nikopol with heavy artillery. The invaders killed two women, aged 60 and 46,” regional governor Sergiy Lysak wrote on social media.
He posted images of a destroyed apartment where a wall and ceiling had collapsed onto on sofa covered with debris.
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A 86-year-old man was pulled out of the damaged building and hospitalised, Lysak said. Nikopol lies on the Dnipro river, within reach from Russian forces on the opposite bank, and its residents are subjected to regular shelling.
Further south in the partially occupied region of Kherson, officials said Russian shelling had killed a 54-year-old woman in the village of Tyagynka.
The announcement came hours after Kyiv said it had faced a barrage of Iranian-designed attack drones overnight.
The air force said it downed 34 of 35 drones targeting the country “in different waves at different times” throughout the night.
Russia launched the Shahed drones from the occupied Crimea peninsula and the southwestern Primorsko-Akhtarsk and Kursk regions.
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Authorities did not report damage to key infrastructure facilities. Falling debris led to a fire in Kyiv but it was extinguished, officials said.
Kyiv has accused the Kremlin of seeking to terrorise its civilians and destroy its energy facilities in a bid to plunge the country into darkness and cold this winter.
Russian occupation officials meanwhile said one man was killed by Ukrainian shelling in the Donetsk region, that the Kremlin claimed to have annexed last year along with Kherson and two other regions.
Ukrainian shelling also wounded two people in the Russian border region of Bryansk, regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said.