Russia launched a hail of missiles across Ukraine early on Monday killing 34 people in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, including children, regional authorities said.
“There are already 34 wounded due to a missile attack on the Pavlograd district,” Sergiy Lysak, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said on social media.
“Five of them are children. The youngest is a girl and only eight years old,” Lysak said.
Shelling also wounded 25 people in the Dnipropetrovsk oblast and damaged dozens of buildings in the city of Pavlohrad, according to the regional administration.
The Ukrainian region of Kherson received 39 shellings from heavy artillery, Grads, drones and warplanes, Oleksandr Prokudin, one of the military administrators in the region, said on Monday.
A 57-year-old woman was killed and three were wounded in the village of Bilozerka, he said.
The Ukrainian Air Force said on Telegram that 18 missiles were launched from planes, with 15 of them destroyed.
Ukraine’s air defense systems have been bolstered in recent months by delivery Western equipment, including the American Patriot systems received in April.
Russia still controls part of Kherson, having withdrawn from the eponymous regional capital last November.
The latest Russian attack came just days after missiles struck the city of Uman killing 23 people and amid the reported preparation by Kyiv for a counteroffensive aimed at expeling Russian forces from territory they seized in the east and south following their 2022 invasion.
Meanwhile, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrsky said Monday that his troops had led small counter-attacks in the now-destroyed Bakhmut city the eastern Donbas region.
Russia is “failing to take control of the city,” Syrsky said, adding that the situation was still “quite complicated.”