One killed in overnight Russian drone strike on Black Sea port of Odesa

An elderly woman was killed in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said on Saturday, as Russia subjected the city and surrounding region to another barrage of drone strikes overnight on Friday.

Odesa region Governor Oleg Kiper said on Saturday morning that the woman had died when a drone struck her single-storey home, causing a fire to break out. The blast wave broke windows in other buildings nearby, he added.

The city and region have both been subjected to continuous drone strikes in recent days. One person was killed and another six were injured in overnight attacks, Kiper said on Friday morning, while on Thursday, some 300,000 people were left without running water and close to 200 apartment blocks without heating in the city after another night of massive Russian strikes.

In the northern Chernihiv region, a local council building was virtually destroyed in another drone strike on Friday evening, a local council head said, though there were no reports of casualties. 

The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia had launched over 100 drones and an Iskander ballistic missile in their overnight airstrikes on Ukraine, though it added that air defences had either shot down or neutralised 91 drones, while 18 drone impacts were recorded at 11 locations, and falling debris at a further two.

Meanwhile, two people were killed and five others were injured in a Ukrainian missile strike on the southwestern Russian city of Belgorod, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported on Friday evening, adding that the missile strike had damaged energy infrastructure, leading to power outages and interruptions to both heating and the city’s water supply.

Last month, Gladkov advised residents of the Belgorod region to stay with relatives elsewhere in the event of a “complex emergency” after over half a million residents of the regional capital Belgorod were left without heating and power following Ukrainian drone strikes on a thermal power plant and an electricity substation.