Russia hits Ukraine's Kharkiv with deadly nighttime barrage of drones

KHARKIV (Reuters) -A concentrated, nine-minute-long Russian drone attack on Ukraine's second largest city of Kharkiv in the middle of the night killed three people and injured 64, including nine children, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.

The overnight attack followed Russia's two biggest air assaults of the war on Ukraine this week, part of intensified bombardments that Moscow said were retaliatory measures for Kyiv's recent attacks in Russia.

Kharkiv, in Ukraine's northeast, withstood Russia's full-scale advance in the early days of the war and has since been a frequent target of drone, missile, and guided aerial bomb assaults.

The intense strikes by 17 drones on Kharkiv sparked fires in 15 units of a five-storey apartment building and caused other damage in the city close to the Russian border, the city's mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

"There are direct hits on multi-storey buildings, private homes, playgrounds, enterprises and public transport," Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging app.

"Every new day now brings new despicable blows from Russia, and almost every blow is telling. Russia deserves increased pressure; with literally every blow it strikes against ordinary life, it proves that the pressure is not enough," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram.

A Reuters witness saw emergency rescuers helping to carry people out of damaged buildings and administering care, while firefighters battled blazes in the dark.

Nine of the injured, including a 2-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, have been hospitalised, Oleh Sinehubov, the governor of the broader Kharkiv region, said on Telegram.

He added that the strikes also hit a city trolley bus depot and several residential buildings.

In total, the Ukrainian military said Russia had launched 85 drones overnight, 40 of which were shot down.

It said nine were lost - meaning the Ukrainian military used electronic warfare to divert them - or were drone simulators without warheads.

"The main areas of the air strike are Kharkiv, Donetsk and Odesa regions," the military said on Telegram.

There was no immediate comment from Russia.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched on its smaller neighbour in February 2022. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.

"We are holding on. We are helping each other. And we will definitely survive," Terekhov said. "Kharkiv is Ukraine. And it cannot be broken."

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Chris Reese, Lincoln Feast, and Aidan Lewis)