Four people were killed in the Ukrainian industrial region of Dnipropetrovsk amid a massive wave of Russia air strikes on Ukraine in the second deadly attack on the area this week amid a push by Moscow to take territory as the peace process stalls.
Serhiy Lysak, the regional governor of Dnipropetrovsk, said another 17 people were injured in the region on June 27, three days after an attack killed 21 and injured 340 others.
"The death toll in Samar city has risen to four. 17 people were injured. Most of the injured have been hospitalized. Two men and a woman are in serious condition. The rest are in moderate condition," he said.
Details of the strikes were still coming in, but Lysak said a fire had broken out in some buildings.
Ukraine's Armed Forces said 363 drones and 8 missiles were launched at the country overnight with the main target the city of Starokostyantyniv, in the Khmelnytskiy region.
Months after countering a surprise Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Russian forces have repeatedly attacked villages and military positions in the region, using continuous shelling to support their ground assault.
The Russian missile strikes on June 24 left dozens of educational and medical facilities in the region damaged. It had also targeted a passenger train departing from the regional center, Dnipro.
Bordering Ukraine's war-torn Donetsk and Zaporizhzhya regions, the city of Dnipro is one of the country's key hubs for internally displaced people and volunteers.
UN human rights monitors described the consequence of the Russian attack as a “foreseeable” tragedy.
Throughout Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine, the country's leadership has continuously denied targeting civilian infrastructure despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Istanbul on May 16 and June 2, the first direct peace talks since the initial weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Putin launched on February 24, 2022.
The negotiations yielded agreements on prisoner swaps and the exchange of bodies of soldiers killed in the war, but produced no progress toward a cease-fire, let alone a peace deal.
Several prisoner swaps have been held since, with another expected for June 27.
