By Vitalii Hnidyi
KHARKIV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Russia launched a barrage of drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine on Friday, killing at least four people and injuring 35 in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, regional officials said.
In the fourth such strike on the city so far this week, Russian drones hit residential quarters, damaging several multi-storey apartment blocks and causing multiple fires.
Rescue teams sifted through rubble throughout the night, searching for survivors.
"As of this morning, unfortunately, there are already four dead. The body of one more person killed by the Russian aggressor has been (removed) from the rubble," Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on the Telegram app. "We also have 35 wounded."
The Prosecutor General’s office said prosecutors were working to identify those who were killed. It also said in a statement that three children were among those injured in the drone attacks.
Ukrainian air defence units and mobile drone-hunting groups shot down 42 of 78 Russian drones overnight across Ukraine, the air force said. The military also used electronic warfare to redirect or spoof another 22 drones, it said.
Kharkiv has been subject to nearly nightly Russian drone strikes in the past week. In previous attacks, the city’s industrial companies and infrastructure were damaged, officials said.
The city withstood the advance of Russian troops through Ukraine including on the capital Kyiv to the west in the early weeks of the February 2022 invasion.
As Russian forces were driven back from the capital and subsequently focused on Ukraine’s east, Kharkiv became a frequent target of air attacks.
The central Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv regions and also the Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast suffered damage from drone attacks, the Ukrainian military and regional officials said.
In the city of Dnipro, three people were injured and an infrastructure facility and several administrative and residential buildings were damaged in the nearby region, the governor said.
The governor said that 13 drones were shot down over the Dnipropetrovsk region overnight.
Two more people were injured in the central Kyiv capital region, regional officials said.
And in southeastern Zaporizhzhia, at least seven drones had attacked targets in the region, injuring one, the regional governor said.