Russian officials say the border region came under attack on Friday, days after a daring incursion, as two are reported killed in Dnipro.
Russia’s southern Belgorod region came under attack from Ukrainian artillery fire, mortar shells and drones on Friday, authorities said, days after one of the most daring cross-border attacks since the war began.
Hours earlier, two drones attacked a Russian city in a region next to the annexed Crimea Peninsula, officials said.
The Kremlin’s forces, meanwhile, attacked a medical clinic in Dnipro, in central Ukraine, killing a 69-year-old passer-by and another civilian. More than 20 others were wounded, including two children, Ukrainian officials said.
Also, a Russian S-300 missile hit a dam in the Karlivka district of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, placing nearby settlements under threat of severe flooding.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the blast in Dnipro as a war crime.
“Another Russian missile attack, another crime against humanity,” he wrote on Twitter. “The buildings of a psychological clinic and a veterinary clinic in the city of Dnipro were destroyed.”
Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, in Kyiv, reported other missile and drone strikes across Ukraine overnight.
“We certainly heard at least two very loud explosions at about four in the morning,” she said, adding that Ukraine’s armed forced claimed to have intercepted several missiles over the capital.
“We’ve been seeing intensified strikes on Ukraine,” she said. “Many say this is because Ukraine is looking very closely at Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive.”
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