April 16 (UPI) -- An airborne Russian assault against Ukraine's cities with hundreds of missiles and drones overnight killed at least 16 people and injured 98, authorities said.
The bulk of the injuries, and all but one of the fatalities, occurred in Odessa, Kyiv and Dnipro in waves of attacks in which 659 drones and 44 ballistic and cruise missiles were unleashed by Russian forces against more than two dozen targets, the Ukraine Air Force said.
Ukraine launched more than 200 drones in the other direction, killing two children, a 5-year-old and a 14-year-old, and injuring two adults in Tuapse in Russia's southern Krasnodar Krai region, according to the state-run TASS news agency, which said drones were also downed over the Belgorod, Smolensk, Kursk, Bryansk and Oryol regions and Crimea.
Ukraine's air defenses downed most of the Russian drones and missiles but the State Emergency Service said four people, including a 12-year-old boy, were killed and 48 were injured in Kyiv, nine were killed and 23 injured in the Black Sea port of Odesa and three people were killed and 27 injured in the central-eastern city of Dnipro.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, in an online post, said multiple districts of the capital were struck with public and residential buildings damaged or destroyed, including in Podilskyi, Desnyanskyi, Dniprovskyi and Obolonskyi where four paramedics were injured after repeat strikes on the location they were working in.
