Separate strikes killed three more people in Ukraine as Zelenskyy urges the West to deploy more air defenses.
A Russian drone attack on an apartment block in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa has killed at least seven people, including a three-year-old boy and a woman with a baby, authorities said. regional.
“Rescuers in Odessa have just discovered the bodies of a mother with a three-month-old baby,” Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said in a post on the Telegram app on Saturday.
At the scene, smoke billowed from debris scattered on the ground where the drone had torn off a chunk of the several-story-high building. Clothes and furniture were strewn among the ruined mass of concrete and steel hanging from the side of the apartment block.
Ukraine's State Emergency Service released photographs, including one of a dead child being placed by rescuers in a body bag.
“This is impossible to forget! This is impossible to forgive,” she wrote. Five people, including a child, were rescued alive, he added.
The governor of the Odessa region, Oleh Kiper, said eight people were injured and rescuers were still searching for more people under the rubble.
Zelenskyy calls for more air defenses
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the drone was a Shahed supplied by Iran.
Russia has launched several thousand of these long-range winged drones throughout the war against targets inside Ukraine.
Al Jazeera's Rob McBride, reporting from kyiv, said a total of 17 Shahed drones targeted Ukraine in the night strikes, and most of them were intercepted by air defenses.
Separate shelling attacks in the frontline regions of Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia killed three people, Ukrainian officials said.
The series of attacks prompted Zelenskyy to reiterate his calls for the West to deliver more air defense systems.
“We need more air defenses from our partners. We need to strengthen the Ukrainian air shield to add more protection to our people against Russian terrorism. More air defense systems and more missiles for air defense systems save lives,” he stated.
Ukraine is currently on the defensive in a two-year war, while a crucial $60 billion aid package is delayed in the US Congress.
Drone crashes into building in St. Petersburg
Ukraine also appears to have launched its own attack: A drone hit a five-story residential building in St. Petersburg, Russia's second city, on Saturday and caused no casualties, according to the Russian National Guard division.
Videos on Russian social media showed what appeared to be a drone spiraling down toward the building, causing an explosion, breaking windows and starting small fires.
The city's National Guard division said its preliminary assumption was that the damage was caused by a “drone that fell.”
Ukrainian media reported that the drone was shot down by Russian air defenses while targeting an oil depot about a kilometer from the crash site.
kyiv has attacked several Russian oil facilities in recent months in what it has called righteous retaliation for Moscow's attacks on Ukraine's power grid.
