Russian, Ukrainian strikes kill 5

KIEV

Russian and Ukrainian strikes killed five people on both sides of the war border, officials said on July 16.

The attacks came as Ukraine has stepped up drone barrages against Russia in what it calls retribution for Moscow’s invasion, now in its fifth year.

Ukrainian shelling killed a 15-year-old girl and her grandmother in a village in the western Russian border region of Bryansk, said acting governor Yegor Kovalchuk.

Another man was killed in a drone raid on Russia’s Yaroslavl region, some 300 kilometers northeast of Moscow, local authorities said.

Russian missiles pounded the Ukrainian capital Kiev overnight, killing two people and wounding five, including a child, Ukraine’s emergency services said.

“Moscow is counting on ballistic terror and continues its strikes, so it’s critical now to speed up deliveries of interceptors for our air defense,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The salvo included 13 missiles, among them eight ballistic missiles, and 151 drones, he added.

AFP journalists in Kiev heard a series of explosions after a Ukrainian air force alert reported the approach of several ballistic missiles.

There were several bright flashes in the sky, followed by half a dozen detonations, they said.

The attack on Kiev came hours after a visit by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan were both in the Ukrainian capital on July 16.