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Russian attacks on south and east Ukraine kill 10 - Kyiv

Russian troops attacked a residential building in Dnipro yesterday with a rocket
Russian troops attacked a residential building in Dnipro yesterday with a rocket

Russian strikes on a southern Ukrainian town and villages in the embattled Donetsk region killed 10 people today, Kyiv said.

The attacks came after months of Ukrainian forces being on the back foot militarily, with Moscow launching several offensives in recent weeks.

The head of the southern Zaporizhzhia region, Ivan Fedorov, said an attack on the town of Vilniansk killed six civilians.

"Russians attacked the town of Vilniansk in Zaporizhzhia district. Preliminarily, six civilians and eight residents were wounded," Mr Fedorov said on social media.

"A critical infrastructure facility, a shop and residential buildings were damaged," he added.

Vilniansk lies 29kms (18 miles) north-east of the city of Zaporizhzhia, the main regional city which is under Ukrainian control.

Russia occupies large swathes of the region. Moscow says it has annexed the Zaporizhzhia region, despite not controlling it fully.

Russia has attacked Zaporizhzhia and nearby towns throughout its offensive but in recent weeks has concentrated its efforts mostly on the east of the country rather than the south.

Ukrainian officials also said that earlier attacks on frontline villages in the eastern Donetsk region killed four people.

"In (the village of) Zarichne, Russians killed three people," Vadym Filashkin, the head of the Donetsk region, said on social media.

Ukraine's General Prosecutor later said that another person, a resident of the frontline village of New York "also sustained fatal injuries".

New York has been intensely attacked since mid-June as Russian forces push towards the city of Toretsk.

Ukrainian police also said today that they had found a woman who was killed in an attack yesterday on the city of Dnipro, further north of Zaporizhzhia, in an attack that also wounded 13 people.

"Police identified a woman killed in a missile attack on Dnipro city. She is a 76-year-old resident of a destroyed apartment block," police said in a statement.

It said the number of wounded in the attack rose to 13, "including an infant and a pregnant woman".

Ukraine drone attack kills five in Russian border village

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone attack on a house in a Russian border village killed five people, including two children, the regional governor has said.

The drone hit a house in the village of Gorodishche, a tiny village in Russia's Kursk region, just a few metres from the border with Ukraine.

"To our great grief, five people were killed...including two small children. Another two members of the family are in a serious condition," Kursk governor Alexei Smirnov said in a post on Telegram.

The attack was with a "copter"-style drone, he added, a small device that can be fitted to carry grenades or other explosives that are dropped over targets.

Both sides have used drones, including larger self-detonating craft with ranges of up to hundreds of kilometres, extensively throughout the conflict which began in February 2022.

Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on Russian territory this year, targeting both energy sites that it says fuel Russia's military, as well as towns and villages just across the border.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a major new land offensive on Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region last month in what he said was an operation to create a "buffer zone" and push Ukrainian forces back to protect Russia's border Belgorod region from shelling.

The Kursk region, where today's attack occurred, lies further north, across from Ukraine's Sumy region, which Kyiv controls.