Russian launched new strikes in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv that hit high-rise apartment buildings, leaving at least 21 wounded in a second consecutive nighttime attack.

The bombs fell Saturday night on the district of Shevchenkivsky, north of the center of Kharkiv, which is the second-largest Ukrainian city, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. Nine residential buildings sustained varying degrees of damage, including 16- and nine-story buildings, he added.

The wounded included an 8-year-old child, according to Syniehubov and Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Terekhov said that 60 residents were evacuated from one of the buildings.

Kharkiv has been a frequent target of Russian attacks since Moscow launched its all-out invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.

The attack came after another late Friday that wounded 15 people, including children ages 10 and 12, as Russian airstrikes hit three Kharkiv neighborhoods, Terekhov said.

Ukrainian officials said that KAB-type aerial glide bombs — a retrofitted Soviet weapon that has for months laid waste to eastern Ukraine — were used in both attacks.

Russia also launched 80 Shahed drones and two missiles at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said. Ukrainian air defense shot down 71 drones, and another six were lost on location due to electronic warfare countermeasures, the statement said.

Farther south, a 12-year-old girl and a woman died after a Russian drone struck a passenger car in the city of Nikopol, local Gov. Serhii Lysak reported. Two others, including a 4-year-old child, suffered wounds.

A Russian artillery strike also killed one person in the eastern town of Kurakhove, regional prosecutors said late Saturday, as Russian forces continue their grinding advance westwards through Ukraine’s industrial Donetsk province.

A Russian drone strike on Sunday morning wounded two civilians in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson, regional authorities said. Hours later, local police reported that Russian attacks wounded at least four more people elsewhere in the Kherson province.

Other Russian drone attacks Sunday damaged energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s central Poltava region and the northern city of Shostka, local officials reported.

Shostka lies in the Sumy region, across the border from Russia’s Kursk province — the target of a startling Ukrainian military incursion launched last month. Weeks into the incursion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelneskyy said that the aim is to create a buffer zone to prevent further Russian cross-border strikes that have for months wreaked havoc in Sumy.

(AP)