School In Odesa Damaged By Drones After Ukrainian Forces Shoot Down Russian Jets

Residents stand among debris on the street outside a house destroyed as a result of a drone attack in Tayirove, Odesa region, on December 17.

An evening attack by Russian forces damaged a school in Odesa, the Prosecutor-General's Office said on December 22 after the Ukrainian Air Force said it shot down three Russian military jets over the southern Kherson region.

Ukraine said the attack that hit the school in Odesa was carried out by drones around 8 p.m. local time, about eight hours after the Ukrainian military said the three Su-34 Russian military jets were downed.

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Oleh Kiper, governor of the Odesa region, said there were no injuries when the drones hit the school but the building was damaged.

During a separate drone attack, air-defense forces shot down all seven Russian targets, the Defense Forces of the South said.

The military warned that Russian forces may launch repeated attacks overnight into the early hours of December 23.

Earlier in his evening address Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy congratulated the Ukrainian military for shooting down the three Russian jets. He said they were the type of aircraft that have been dropping KAB guided bombs and launching X-59 cruise missiles against the Kherson region.

A report earlier on December 22 said more than two dozen drones were launched against Kyiv overnight.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko and emergency services said that a block of apartments south of the city center was struck by one drone, resulting in two injuries and triggering a fire that was quickly brought under control.

A nationwide air-raid alert was declared in early afternoon on December 22 but was later lifted.

Earlier, the Ukrainian military said 24 of 28 Iranian-made kamikaze drones launched by Russia were shot down.

"Aircraft, antiaircraft missile units, and mobile groups of the Air Force and the Defense Forces of Ukraine were involved in repelling the air attack," the Air Force said. "As a result, 24 'Shaheds' were shot down within Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolayiv, Kherson, Zhytomyr, Rivne, and Khmelnytskiy regions."

The military said the drones were launched from the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula and from the Kursk and Primorsko-Akhtarsk areas of southwestern Russia.

With reporting by Reuters