Russian ballistic missile strike on Kryvyi Rih apartment block kills man, injures 11, says Ukraine

Lying about 40 miles from the nearest Russian-occupied territory, city has regularly been the target of Russian missile attacks throughout war

Ukrainian soldiers attend a Christmas parade in downtown Lviv, Western Ukraine, on Christmas Eve. Ukraine will celebrate Christmas on  December 25th for a second time after President Zelenskiy signed a law in July 2023 to move the official Christmas holiday to that date, departing from the Russian Orthodox Church tradition of January 7th. Photograph: Mykola Tys/EPA
Ukrainian soldiers attend a Christmas parade in downtown Lviv, Western Ukraine, on Christmas Eve. Ukraine will celebrate Christmas on December 25th for a second time after President Zelenskiy signed a law in July 2023 to move the official Christmas holiday to that date, departing from the Russian Orthodox Church tradition of January 7th. Photograph: Mykola Tys/EPA

One man was killed and 11 were wounded by a ballistic missile strike on an apartment block in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, local officials said on Tuesday, and Kyiv condemned the Christmas Eve attack.

"The monsters landed a direct hit on a four-storey residential block with 32 apartments," the head of the city's military administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, wrote on Telegram.

One man whose body had been pulled from under the rubble could not be revived by medics, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.

"While other countries of the world are celebrating Christmas, Ukrainians are continuing to suffer from endless Russian attacks," Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets wrote on Telegram.

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Mr Lysak posted photographs of rescuers trawling through a large pile of rubble, recovering a person covered in dust and loading them into an ambulance.

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“There may still be people under the rubble,” he wrote in the late afternoon, more than two hours after the strike.

Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is a steelmaking city with a pre-war population of more than 600,000.

Its southern outskirts lie about 40 miles (65 km) from the nearest Russian-occupied territory, and it has regularly been the target of Russian missile attacks throughout the war.

Russia says it does not deliberately target civilians, although thousands have been killed since Moscow launched its invasion in 2022.

Ukraine earlier said Russia had attacked it with 60 drones overnight, of which 36 were downed and 23 were jammed by electronic warfare.

The Ukrainian air force said drones had been shot down in eight regions across the country in a statement posted on the Telegram app on Tuesday.

Moscow is pressing on the 1,000-km front line along Ukraine’s east and south almost three years into its full-scale invasion. It has launched near-daily waves of drones in the past few months, seeking to exhaust Ukrainian air defences and hit key infrastructure. – Reuters