Two teenagers are killed and dozens injured in Russian attacks on Kyiv and central Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone strike killed a teenager in Kiev during an hours-long night-time barrage on the Ukrainian capital, officials said, while a rocket attack in central Ukraine that also left at least five people dead and 21 injured was reported.

According to Kiev Mayor Vitalii Klitschko, the drone hit a 25-story apartment block in the west of the city on Friday evening, killing a 15-year-old girl and injuring five others. Ukrainian emergency services said 100 people were evacuated following the strike, which damaged several apartments on the upper floors of the building.

Serhii Popko, head of the local military administration in Kiev, said Russian forces shelled the city for seven and a half hours overnight. Air raid sirens wailed throughout the night, and Popko said Ukrainian air defenses shot down up to a dozen Russian drones.

Also late Friday, a Russian missile hit a residential area in downtown Dnipro, killing a 14-year-old and four others, regional governor Serhii Lysak said, adding that at least 21 others were injured, including an 8-year-old. old and young people. The wife and teenage daughter of a local police officer were pulled dead from the rubble, police reported. The attack damaged over a dozen homes, private homes and a medical facility.

A man and a woman died after a Russian drone dropped explosives on a village in the southern Kherson region, local prosecutors said, while two people in their 60s were killed by shelling in the northeastern Kharkiv province.

In Kiev province, which surrounds the capital but is not part of it, flying debris from a drone strike killed a woman, Ukraine's emergency service reported. Elsewhere in the region, a 13-year-old boy was injured, it said.

Russian forces fired a total of 91 drones and seven missiles into Ukrainian territory overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Saturday in the latest regular media updates. It said 44 of the drones were shot down.

In Russia, air defense shot down 17 Ukrainian drones over four regions near the border, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported on Saturday.

Moscow's troops continued to make battlefield gains in Ukraine's industrial east, capturing the hamlet of Oleksandropil in the Donetsk region, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Russia has been waging a bitter campaign along Ukraine's eastern front for months, gradually forcing Kiev to give up territory. But Russia has struggled to expel Ukrainian troops from its border region of Kursk an idea almost three months ago.