KYIV (Reuters) – Two people were killed, eight wounded and six still missing after a Russian drone crashed into an apartment block in Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa on Saturday, authorities said.
“Russia continues to fight civilians… One of the enemy drones hit a residential building in Odessa. 18 apartments were destroyed,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Telegram post.
A video posted by Zelenskiy showed an apartment building with a chunk several storeys tall ripped out of it, and dozens of rescuers scrambling to cut through a sea of rubble on the ground.
According to Zelenskiy, the drone was a Shahed, a large, winged kamikaze drone supplied by Iran. Russia has launched several thousand of these throughout the war at targets deep inside Ukraine.
Odesa’s regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said at 8:30 AM local time (0630 GMT) that work was ongoing to clear the rubble and that a man had been pulled out alive, having likely been in the basement at the time of the strike.
Ukraine’s Suspilne public broadcaster cited local prosecutors as saying six people were still unaccounted for.
(Reporting by Max Hunder; editing by Jason Neely)
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