A week after Russia's air strike across Ukraine, several loud explosions rocked its capital Kyiv on Monday. According to Ukraine, kamikaze drones had hit the capital city. The officials urged the residents to take shelter and rescue operations are underway.
Kyiv city mayor Vitaliy Klichko said the central Shevchenko district of the capital had been hit.
Further details are awaited.
The explosions came from the same central Kyiv district were a week ago a missile struck a children's playground and the intersection near the Kyiv National University's main buildings.
The videos circulated on social media showed a fire in the area of the apparently strike, with black smoke rising into the early morning light.
In a post on the Telegram social media site, the head of the Ukrainian president's office said that Russian forces struck Kyiv with Iranian Shahed drones, wrote Andrii Yermak. Russia has repeatedly been using the so-called suicide drones in recent weeks to target urban centers and infrastructure, including power stations.
The strike on Kyiv comes as fighting has intensified in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in recent days, as well as the continued Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south near Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last night in his evening address that there was heavy fighting around the cities of Bakhmut and Soledar in the Donetsk region.
The Donetsk and Luhansk regions make up the bulk of the industrial east known as the Donbas, and were two of four regions annexed by Russia in September in defiance of international law.
On Sunday, the Russian-backed regime in the Donetsk region said Ukraine had shelled its central administrative building in a direct hit. No casualties were reported.
(With inputs from PTI)
