By Olena Harmash
KYIV (Reuters) -Russian shelling killed three people in Ukraine on Thursday and four were hurt in Kyiv after the capital came under attack for the third successive night, Ukrainian officials said.
An woman of 85 and a man in his forties were killed in the south of Ukraine and a 60-year-old person was killed in the north, hours after an overnight drone strike on the Kyiv area.
There has been no letup in Russian attacks or fighting in Ukraine this week, when NATO leaders have discussed security threats posed by Moscow at a summit in Lithuania and offered new military aid packages to Ukraine.
Ukrainian air defences shot down all 20 drones launched at the capital and the surrounding region overnight, as well as two Kalibr missiles fired at other parts of the country, the air force said.
Two people in Kyiv suffered from smoke inhalation during fires caused by falling debris, and two were hurt by shrapnel, the interior ministry said.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person had been killed in a fire in the capital overnight but the ministry said the cause was still being determined.
“This night, Russian terrorists again resorted to a mass attack,” said Ruslan Kravchenko, the governor of the Kyiv region. British ambassador Melinda Simmons wrote on Twitter: “Pretty nasty night.”
A missile and several drones were shot down in the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, where falling debris damaged several buildings, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said.
The 85-year-old woman was killed when Russian forces shelled the village of Mykilske in the southern region of Kherson around noon (0900 GMT), regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
The man in his forties who was killed died in shelling of the town of Orikhiv in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, governor Yuriy Malashko said.
The third person killed by Russian shelling was a 60-year-old resident of the village of Popivka in the northern region of Sumy region, the General Prosecutor’s office said.
Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, did not comment on the latest attacks.
Although Kyiv says its forces have made progress in the east and south since starting a counteroffensive in June, Russia still occupies swathes of territory and Zelenskiy has said the counterattack has gone more slowly than initially hoped.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash, Ron Popeski, Oleksander Kozhukhar and Anna Pruchnicka; Editing by Timothy Heritage)
