KYIV, Jan 29 (Reuters) – A Russian drone strike killed three people and wounded three more overnight in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, the regional governor and emergency services said on Thursday.
Two women aged 26 and 50 and a 62-year-old man were killed in the attack, Ukraine’s emergency services said, adding that one private building had been destroyed and several others damaged.
Emergency services posted photos on the Telegram messaging app of firefighters battling a raging fire and a flattened building.
Overall, in the past 24 hours Russia has launched 841 strikes at 34 settlements in the region, Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
Russian forces occupy large swathes of territory in Zaporizhzhia and have been making recent gains there. It is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia claims to have annexed since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 105 drones overnight, of which 84 were downed.
Ukraine and Russia met for U.S.-brokered peace talks in Abu Dhabi last week, with further meetings expected on Sunday, but Russia has continued to pound Ukrainian cities and both countries have hit each other’s energy infrastructure.
Moscow’s drones also struck again the southern port city of Odesa, causing a large fire at an industrial facility, Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.
Kiper said that warehouses, production buildings and trucks were damaged in the attack, adding that no one was hurt.
The city of Odesa and surrounding region have been a repeated target of Moscow’s attacks in recent months as it steps up pressure on Ukraine’s maritime export arteries in retaliation for Kyiv’s strikes on unregulated oil tankers sailing to Russia.
The death toll of an overnight attack on Tuesday on Odesa rose to four, Kiper said, after an elderly man died in a hospital from his injuries.
Russian officials made no comments on the attacks. Both Moscow and Kyiv deny they are targeting civilians in the nearly four-year war.
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Gareth Jones)
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