Russia attacks Ukraine with 72 drones overnight, Kyiv says

KYIV, UKRAINE — 

Ukraine's air force said on Friday on Russia attacked it with 72 drones overnight though it downed 33 of them while 34 others disappeared from radar without reaching their targets.

Five drones struck various buildings in the northern region of Chernihiv, wounding one person, the air force said. One downed drone fell on a building in the capital Kyiv but did not cause casualties.

Video footage filmed by Reuters carried the sound of an explosion and showed a fire burning in the distance in Kyiv during the overnight attack.

More footage after daybreak showed the charred corner of a high-rise apartment block in Kyiv with windows blown out and a line of cars parked below suffering damage.

Massed Russian aerial attacks using long-range drones have been a near-daily occurrence over Ukraine in the past several months, as Moscow looks to exhaust Kyiv's air defenses almost three years into its full-scale war against its neighbor.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's army struck a supermarket on Friday in the Russian-held city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine in an attack that used U.S.-supplied missiles and wounded two people, a senior Russian-backed official said.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine and Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.

Unverified photos posted on social media showed a burnt out car in front of a shattered two-story circular building surrounded by debris.

Dashcam footage posted by a driver nearby appeared to show the moment the supermarket -- called Moloko (Milk) -- was struck, with an ensuing large explosion and flames soaring into the sky.

Reuters was able to confirm the location from a nearby building's facades, signages and road layout that matched satellite imagery and street view imagery. The date was verified by a timestamp on the footage.

Denis Pushilin, a senior Russian-backed official, accused the Ukrainian army of firing U.S.-supplied HIMARS missiles into the area during the morning rush hour.

Russia's TASS state news agency said other buildings and around 15 cars had been damaged in the same attack.

Pushilin said in a statement on his official Telegram account that an apartment building in the city of Svitlodarsk in the Donetsk region had also been struck by Ukrainian forces, killing one woman and wounding four others.