An official with Ukraine's emergency services told AFP that six people had been confirmed killed so far, with another four presumed dead but still to be formally identified.Russia fired a total of 74 missiles and 284 drones in the overnight barrage, according to Ukraine's air force -- the latest deadly attack in the four-and-a-half-year war, which is seeing a spike in civilian deaths.In the capital Kyiv, tens of thousands hunkered in packed-out metro stations through the night after blasts started ringing out shortly after midnight.The western city of Lviv was also badly hit, and neighbouring NATO member Poland said a 10-metre crater punctured in a field 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the Ukraine border was likely from a Russian missile."The Russians used their ballistic missile to destroy an ordinary house belonging to an ordinary family," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media."It was an ordinary home, blown into smithereens," he added."The Voronov family: mother Olena, father Artem, seven children," and a grandchild, he said.
'An ordinary home, blown into smithereens,' Zelensky said. © Handout / Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration/AFP
The strike hit their house outside the eastern city of Kryvyi Rig -- Zelensky's home town.The youngest presumed victim was one and a half years old, he added.The emergency services official said that such was the devastation at the scene, 17 "body fragments" had been found, and forensic examinations were ongoing."It can be preliminarily stated that all 10 people who were in the house have died," Sergiy Kovtoniuk, press officer of the State Emergency Service in the Dnipropetrovsk region, told AFP.The regional governor published photos of rescuers sifting through the rubble of a destroyed house, wooden beams and concrete debris strewn across the yard.'I want to live'Three people were also killed across Kyiv, Poltava and Lviv, local officials there said.Russia's defence ministry said it had hit Ukrainian military-industrial complex, military communications and logistics centres.Zelensky had late on Wednesday warned of a likely missile attack, prompting tens of thousands in Kyiv to preemptively seek shelter.
