Four killed and 60 injured in Russian strike on shopping centre, Ukraine says
The attack in Pavlohrad city centre was the third Russian strike on a mall within days, local media report.
Four killed and 60 injured in Russian strike on shopping centre, Ukraine says
Ukrainian officials say four people were killed and 60 wounded when a Russian drone hit a shopping mall in Pavlohrad, a city in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Shops and vehicles were struck in the daytime attack, which happened "when the streets were full of people," Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said.
According to Ukrainian media, two other shopping malls — in Zaporizhzhia and Sumy — were targeted by Russian air strikes earlier this week.
Russia said a Ukrainian seaborne drone attack on the resort city of Sochi overnight on Wednesday left 28 people wounded, along with three further deaths blamed on Ukrainian attacks.
The full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine has been ongoing since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion more than four and a half years ago.
A fresh peacemaking push by envoys sent by US President Donald Trump at the weekend appears to have produced few tangible results, after talks in Moscow with Putin and in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Images released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine show firefighters aiming water hoses at burning vehicles amid clouds of smoke on a street in Pavlohrad.
Two of the injured are reported to be members of the service, and a child was also hurt.
Zelensky expressed his condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed in Thursday's attack.
"The Russians used drones to kill people who were simply standing near shopping centres," Ukraine's president said in his statement.
Pavlohrad, a logistics hub near the central city of Dnipro, has previously been heavily attacked, with two people killed in a strike on warehouses there last month.
Ukrainian officials say a Russian drone attack on a mall in Sumy on Wednesday killed two people and wounded 20. On Thursday, Russian aerial bombing reportedly injured eight people in Sumy, including three children.
In Zaporizhzhia, the capital of the region of the same name, which was partially annexed by Russia soon after the invasion, a shopping mall was almost entirely destroyed on Monday, its owners said.
However, it was closed at the time and there were no immediate reports of casualties.
One of the deadliest attacks on a shopping centre came last month, when Ukrainian officials say Russian drones killed at least 16 people and injured 130 in the city of Kryvyi Rih.
Shopping malls in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine have also been attacked, with a Ukrainian drone strike reported on Monday on a mall in the port city of Mariupol, Donetsk region, and another attack on the city of Donetsk last month.
On Wednesday night, several Ukrainian seaborne drones attacked the shoreline at Sochi, Russian officials say. Two of the 28 people reported injured are children.
On Thursday, Russian officials reported that a Ukrainian drone strike on the town of Novy Oskol in Belgorod Region had killed one person and wounded six others.
It was also announced that a Ukrainian attack on a car in Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday had killed a 15-year-old girl, while injuring a six-year-old child and two women; and a separate attack on a civilian lorry in the same region had killed a man.