(Reuters) – Russia’s drone attack on Ukraine’s western city of Ternopil hit a residential building, killing one person and injuring several others, Ternopil’s military administration said on Monday.
“A residential building was damaged,” Viacheslav Negoda, the head of the military administration of Ternopil region, said on his Telegram messaging channel. “Unfortunately, there are casualties: one person has died, there are seriously wounded.”
Serhiy Nadal, the head of the regional defence headquarters in Ternopil, said via Telegram that as result of the attack, a fire engulfed several flats on the top floor of a five-storey apartment building.
He said that residents from several apartments were evacuated and that emergency services were working at the scene. Social media videos showed flames bursting out of the windows of a multi-storey apartment building in the darkness.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia about the attack. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war, which Moscow launched with full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022.
The city of Ternopil and its surrounding region were under air raid alerts for a couple of hours starting soon after midnight on Monday, according to data provided by Ukraine’s air force.
Russia’s largest ever drone attack on Ukraine on Nov. 26th cut power to much of the Ternopil region, of which the city of Ternopil is the administrative centre.
Ternopil, some 220 km (134 miles) east of NATO-member Poland, and the surrounding region had a population of more than one million before the February 2022 Russian invasion, which drove many Ukrainians west.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne)