Waves of explosive-laden suicide drones struck Ukraine’s capital Monday, setting buildings ablaze and tearing a hole in one while sending people scurrying for shelter or attempting to shoot down the kamikazes.
The concentrated use of drones was the second barrage in as many weeks — after months where air attacks had become a rarity in central Kyiv. The assault sowed terror and frayed nerves as blasts echoed across the city. Energy facilities were struck, and one drone slammed into a residential building, killing three people, authorities said.
The attack drones appeared to include Iranian-made Shaheds. Intense, sustained bursts of gunfire rang out as they buzzed overhead, apparently soldiers trying to shoot them down. Others headed for shelter, nervously scanning the skies. But Ukraine has become grimly accustomed to attacks nearly eight months into the Russian invasion and city life resumed as rescuers picked through the debris.
Previous Russian airstrikes on Kyiv were mostly with missiles. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Monday’s barrage came in successive waves of 28 drones — in what many fear could become a more common mode of attack as Russia seeks to avoid depleting its stockpiles of long-range precision missiles.
Five drones plunged into Kyiv itself, said Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. In the Kyiv region, at least 13 were shot down, all of them flying in from the south, said a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yurii Ihnat.
One strike appeared to target the city’s heating network, hitting an operations center. Another slammed into a four-story residential building, ripping a large hole in it and collapsing at least three apartments on top of each other. Three bodies were recovered from the rubble, including those of a woman who was 6-months pregnant and her husband, said Klitschko. The other person killed there was an older woman.
An Associated Press photographer who was out shooting morning scenes of Kyiv caught one of the drones on camera, its triangle-shaped wing and pointed warhead clearly visible against the blue sky.
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