A Russian missile has hit a residential area in the vicinity of a Ukrainian nuclear power station amid heightened fears of a nuclear accident, Ukrainian officials said today.
Twelve civilians - including three children - were reportedly wounded in the attack.
Vitaliy Kim, governor of the southern Mykolaiv region, said that the strike damaged several private houses and a five-storey apartment building in Voznesensk.
The town is about 20km from the Pivdennoukrainsk Nuclear Power Plant, the second largest in Ukraine, and which Russian forces tried to seize in March.
This follows repeated shelling of the town of Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant - Europe's largest - is located, with Moscow and Kyiv trading blame for the attacks.
The attack comes as Russia steps up its efforts to consolidate control in much of the east of the country, while continuing to fire on towns and villages in the north and south.
In Crimea, a Ukrainian drone was shot down over the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea fleet, a local official said.
"The drone was shot down just above the fleet headquarters" in the city of Sevastopol, city governor Mikhail Razvojaev wrote on Telegram, blaming the attempt on Ukrainian forces.
"It fell on the roof and caught fire," he said, adding that there was no major damage or victims.
"When we woke up in the morning, still in bed, we heard some bangs, like if boys let off firecrackers in the park – bang, bang, bang," said Natalia Goreykova, a local resident.
"We knew the drones were coming here from time to time, so we were ready for this," she added.
Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian military infrastructure in Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that Moscow invaded in 2014, including huge blasts last week at an air base.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Kyiv has been withholding any official comment on the attacks.
In a new assessment, a Western official said that incident had rendered half of Russia's Black Sea naval aviation force useless in a stroke.
The official was speaking on condition of anonymity to the Reuters news agency.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that a mission by the UN's nuclear watchdog to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant could re-establish the station's security.
However, he warned of Russian ''radiation blackmail.''
On Thursday, Mr Zelenskiy agreed on the parameters of a mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the plant with UN secretary general Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.
French President Emmanuel Macron's office said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to send a mission of experts from the IAEA to the site.
Meanwhile, in an unsupported claim, Russia's defence ministry has accused Ukraine of poisoning some of its servicemen in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine's southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia in late July.
An adviser to Ukraine's interior ministry said in response that the alleged poisoning could have been caused by Russian forces eating expired canned meat.
