KYIV: At least four people were killed including a 10-year-old child after a Russian missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rig on Monday, officials said. “There’s already four dead in Kryvyi Rig,” Sergiy Lysak, the head of the military administration for the Dnipropetrovsk region, wrote on Telegram. Among the dead were a 10-year-old girl and her 45-year-old mother, the head of the city’s military administration Oleksandr Vilkul said in televised comments. The other two victims were two men, while another 53 people were injured, Vilkul said. “(Several) people may still remain under the rubble,” he added.

Part of a nine-storey apartment block hit by the strike collapsed while the rubble was being cleared, the emergency ministry said. Two missiles landed close to the centre of the city just after 9:00 am, interior minister Igor Klymenko wrote on Telegram. One of the strikes hit the residential block, punching a huge hole in the facade that destroyed apartments on several floors and sparked a fire. Firefighters were using a cherry-picker crane to direct jets of water at the fire. President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was born and grew up in Kryvyi Rig, said Russians were “continuing to terrorise peaceful cities and people”. The strikes also hit a crossroads and an educational building, Zelensky said.

Vilkul said the second damaged building was part of the Kryvyi Rig Professional College of National University of Economics and Management. The strikes came after a missile attack last month destroyed a five-storey apartment building in the city and killed 12 people. Meanwhile, Moscow has intensified strikes on Ukrainian military infrastructure in response to attacks on Russian-controlled territory, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Monday. “Against the background of the failure of the so-called ‘counteroffensive’, Kyiv... has focused on carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure,” Shoigu said.

“The intensity of our strikes against Ukrainian military facilities.. has been considerably increased,” he added. Russia said Sunday it downed Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow and the Crimea peninsula it annexed in 2014, the latest in series of attacks on the capital, border regions and annexed-Crimea. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later said “war is returning to the territory of Russia... this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.” Shoigu said the army had taken “additional measures to increase protection against attacks from the air and the sea”. The Kremlin said the recent drone attack on Moscow was “an act of desperation” by Ukraine due to setbacks on the battlefield.- AFP