Russian strikes hit port facilities in Odesa
Russia unleashed new air strikes on Ukraine early on Friday, killing a 10-year-old boy in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and damaging grain and port infrastructure in the Odesa region in the south, Ukrainian officials said, Reuters reports.
The boy was killed when Russia hit Ukraine's second biggest city with two Iskander ballistic missiles, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said. Twenty-three others were wounded, including an 11-month-old baby, he said.
The boy's father, Oleh Bychko, told Reuters he had managed to pull his younger son and wife out of the rubble after the strike. Bychko, his face scratched and his clothes covered in blood, stood shocked and lost for words after the death of his 10-year-old son, Tymofiy.
The missile attack destroyed much of a residential building, where rescue workers worked among the rubble of bricks, twisted metal and wood.
The attacks followed a Russian missile strike on Thursday in which Ukrainian officials said dozens of people were killed in a village in northeastern Ukraine during a gathering to mourn a fallen Ukrainian soldier.
The attack on Hroza was one of the deadliest single strikes on civilians since Russia's invasion in February 2022.
In the latest strikes overnight, Ukrainian air defences shot down 25 of 33 drones launched by Russia from the annexed Crimea peninsular, the air force said in a statement.
The drone strikes targeted Odesa and Mykolaiv regions in the south, Dnipropetrovsk region in the southeast, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions in the centre and also Kharkiv region in the northeast, the air force said on the Telegram messaging app. One drone attack damaged a grain silo in the Izmail district of the Odesa region, regional governor Oleh Kiper said. Nine trucks caught fire at the site but the fire was put out quickly.
