An overnight Russian attack on the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil left at least 25 people dead and dozens of others wounded, Ukrainian authorities said on Wednesday, making it one of the deadliest strikes on the country in recent months.
"In Ternopil, residential nine-story buildings were hit, causing fires. Unfortunately, there is significant destruction, and there may be people trapped under the rubble," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in an early morning post on X.
He published photos and videos of a badly damaged apartment building engulfed in flames and smoke, as well as what appeared to be a burning warehouse.
Zelensky initially said the death toll from the attack was nine people, but law enforcement authorities later raised that number to 25 as rescue workers recovered more bodies from the site of the strike.
"In Ternopil, 25 people, including three children, have been killed in a Russian strike on the city," Ukraine's Interior Ministry said in a statement shortly after 3 p.m. local time. "Another 73 people, among them 15 children, were injured."
Officials in Ternopil said that large fires had caused chlorine levels in the surrounding air to spike to six times the norm, urging residents to stay indoors and keep windows closed.
A dramatic video shared on social media purportedly showed the moment a Russian missile directly struck an apartment building in the city. The Moscow Times could not independently verify the video's authenticity.
Russia's Defense Ministry did not specifically mention the attack on Ternopil in its daily briefing on Wednesday, but it claimed that its forces had targeted "defense industry and energy facilities that supported their operations, as well as long-range drone storage sites in western Ukraine."
"All intended targets were hit and the objectives of the strike were achieved," the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Russia launched 476 drones and 48 missiles in overnight attacks across Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian air force, which said that it destroyed 442 of the drones and 41 missiles.
Other regions targeted in overnight attacks included eastern Ukraine's Kharkiv, where dozens of people were injured, as well as Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, Chernihiv and Dnipro.
AFP contributed reporting.
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