A Russian missile strike killed 11 people, including two children, in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday evening, authorities in Ukraine said Monday.
The missile strike on a nine-story apartment building prompted an evacuation of more than 400 residents from the damaged building, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office identified two of the people killed in the blast as a nine-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl. Local military officials said 84 people, including 11 children, were injured in the attack.
Law enforcement authorities said they launched a pre-trial investigation into premeditated murder with the violation of laws and customs of war.
Ukraine’s military said the Sumy region was targeted overnight by two Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles launched from Russia’s Voronezh region and a Kh-59 guided missile from the airspace of Russia’s Kursk region.
Russia’s military, which claimed a “massive strike” on Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure targets Sunday morning, has not commented on the evening strikes in Sumy. Ukraine announced nationwide emergency power restrictions from Monday after the large-scale attacks.
Sumy lies 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) southwest of Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops continue to hold swaths of territory more than three months after a surprise cross-border incursion.
Earlier on Sunday, authorities in Russia said Ukrainian drone attacks had killed a man in the Belgorod region and a woman — identified as local journalist Yulia Kuznetsova — in the Kursk region.
Kursk region Governor Alexei Smirnov said Kuznetsova had been reporting on the “situation in the region,” where the Ukrainian incursion has displaced thousands of people.
AFP contributed reporting.
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