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Russian strike kills three in south Ukraine: military official

A wrecked white van lies in debris and rubble
A destroyed van is seen amid debris after a market was hit during a Russian air strike on Nikopol, Ukraine, at the weekend

A Russian strike on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa killed three people including a child, a military official has said.

Moscow has been firing drones at Ukraine in nightly barrages during its four-year invasion launched in February 2022, with Kyiv accusing it of attacking residential areas and targeting civilians.

"As a result of the overnight enemy attack, tragically, three fatalities are confirmed, among them a child," Sergiy Lysak, the head of the city's military administration, posted on Telegram.

Two people were hospitalised with serious injuries, he added.

Elsewhere, at least eight people were injured, including two children, during Ukrainian drone attacks on the Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk, with a number of residential houses sustaining damage, Russian authorities.

Russia did not say if the port of Novorossiysk, Russia's largest exporting outlet on the Black Sea, was struck.

Ukraine has significantly intensified attacks on Russia's energy facilities, including the largest oil ‌exporting hubs both on the ⁠Baltic and Black seas, seeking to reduce Moscow's revenues from the sales of oil, the lifeblood of its economy.

The area of the port of Novorossiysk is also a location for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's terminal, which exports oil from Kazakhstan and whose shareholders include US majors, such as Chevron and ‌Exon Mobil.

Usually, when the alerts for air raids are issued, the oil terminals suspend operations.

Russia's ⁠military said that air defence units had downed 148 Ukrainian drones ‌over a three-hour period and officials said emergency crews were restoring power ⁠to nearly half ‌a million households in outages linked to air attacks.

Yesterday evening, a drone killed a civil defence volunteer in Russia's border region of Belgorod, a frequent target of the Ukrainian military.

The mayor of the port ⁠of Novorossiysk, Andrei Kravchenko, said drone debris had struck a high-rise apartment building.

In Russian-controlled Donetsk region ⁠in eastern Ukraine, the head of the Russia-installed government, Andrei Chertkov, said repair crews had restored power to two major cities, Donetsk and Makiivka, after Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure.

He had earlier said that nearly half a million households had been left without electricity. Work was continuing in areas still without power.

Crews were also restoring power after mass ‌outages in Russian-held areas of Zaporizhzhia region.