Adedokun Waliyu 
Six people have been killed and dozens more wounded in a Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, as air attacks were reported in Kyiv and other cities.
“A five-storey building got destroyed” Serhiy Lysak, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk region, said on Telegram. “There are still people under the rubble.
Three cruise missiles were shot down but others got through, he said.
Kryvyi Rih’s mayor, Oleksandr Vilkul, said six people had died in the attack.
The devastation in President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s hometown is the latest bloodshed in Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month, as Ukrainian forces are mounting counteroffensive operations using western-supplied firepower.
Zelenskiy said Russia was continuing its “war against residential buildings, ordinary cities and people” and the rescue operation was continuing in the city.
Images from the scene relayed by Zelenskiy on his Telegram channel showed firefighters battling blazes as pockets of fire poked through multiple broken windows of a building. Charred and damaged vehicles littered the ground nearby.
Elsewhere, the Ukrainian capital and the north-eastern city of Kharkiv also came under missile and drone attack.
“According to initial reports, the enemy used Kh-101/555 cruise missiles,” Kyiv’s city military administration said. “All enemy targets in the airspace around Kyiv were detected and successfully destroyed,” it said, adding there was no immediate information on any casualties or damage.
In Kharkiv, civilian infrastructure was hit by a drone attack, said the city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov. “According to initial reports, a utility company in the Kyivskyi district, as well as a warehouse in Saltivskyi district got damaged. A fire broke out as a result of the explosion on the latter,” he said.
Air alerts also sounded in the Dnipropetrovsk oblast and the neighbouring Donetsk and Poltava regions.
Ukraine says it has retaken several villages and made advances in its counteroffensive against Russian forces. “The fighting is tough, but we are moving forward, this is very important,” Zelenskiy said on Monday in his daily evening address.
