Ukraine strike on Russia-held part of Kherson region kills four

MOSCOW: A Ukrainian strike on the Russia-held part of Ukraine's Kherson region killed four people, the Moscow-installed governor said on Tuesday, as Kyiv stepped up retaliatory strikes against Russia. Moscow said it had intercepted 209 drones overnight and in the morning from Ukraine's second large barrage in a row.
Four civilians were killed in a 'targeted drone attack on civilian vehicles' on a highway, Vladimir Saldo, governor of the Russian-occupied part of Kherson region, wrote on Telegram. He added another person was wounded in a separate Ukrainian strike in the region. Kyiv did not immediately comment but denies targeting civilians in Russian-occupied areas of the country.
Ukraine's local authorities meanwhile accused Russia of killing a man in the city of Kherson, which is controlled by Kyiv. 'A 65-year-old resident of Kherson came under enemy fire. He sustained fatal injuries,' the Kherson region governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram on Tuesday. Kyiv is ramping up strikes on Russia's energy and oil infrastructure, in what it sees as a legitimate response to Moscow's daily attacks on Ukrainian cities, which have at times left millions without heating and power.
Ukraine said Russia had launched 154 drones and missiles overnight on Monday-Tuesday, around half of which were intercepted. An unmanned aircraft hit railway and energy infrastructure in Ukraine's Poltava and Sumy regions, leaving more than 1,000 people without electricity. On Monday, Ukraine launched 251 drones towards Russia, and two people died in a rocket strike on the city of Belgorod around 30 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
'One thousand people in four settlements remain without electricity,' according to Belgorod's governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that repair works were ongoing after the barrage. The Russian army controls around one-fifth of Ukraine's territory, including the Crimean peninsula annexed in 2014, and has been grinding forward on the battlefield, with both militaries suffering immense losses.
Ukraine launched a major drone attack on Russia for the second day in a row, Moscow said on Tuesday, reporting that it had intercepted 209 drones overnight and in the morning. The attack is Kyiv's second consecutive barrage on Russia as it steps up retaliatory strikes. Most of the drones were shot down over the regions of Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod and Belgorod, Russia's defence ministry said in a statement. The strikes hit an unidentified industry enterprise in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Governor Gleb Nikitin said. Russian authorities did not report any injuries or deaths on Tuesday.
Ukraine found tens of thousands of foreign parts, some Western-made, in Russian drones and missiles fired on Ukraine over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday. 'During the massive combined strike on Ukraine on the night of October 5, Russia used 549 weapon systems containing 102,785 foreign-made components,' Zelensky said on social media, referring to an attack in the early hours of Sunday. Russia fired almost 500 drones and over 50 missiles at Ukraine that night, killing five people — including in the western Lviv region hundreds of kilometres from the front line — and damaging its energy infrastructure. — AFP