A Russian attack on a residential area of the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya killed two people and injured seven, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on August 9 as the Ukrainian military's counteroffensive operations continued along the front line.
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Klymenko said there had been a report about a third death in the strike on Zaporizhzhya but the person was resuscitated with the help of police paramedics and doctors on the spot, he said on Telegram. He said firefighters extinguished a fire that the strike caused in a utility building.
The Interior Ministry reported that a church and a supermarket were destroyed as a result of the rocket strike.
"The rescue operation is ongoing. All victims will be provided with the necessary assistance. And this war crime of Russia will certainly receive its verdict," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram.
The city lies about 50 kilometers northeast of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since early in the war. Shelling near the plant has repeatedly raised fears of a nuclear accident.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian military earlier cited more than 30 frontline clashes amid the 2-month-old counteroffensive. It said enemy air strikes had hit more than 15 settlements in the area around Zaporizhzhya. Russian shelling also battered 10 settlements and the city of Kherson.
The General Staff claimed Ukrainian defenses in the eastern Donetsk region were "firmly holding" in the area of Bakhmut and had repelled attacks, but that Russian shelling had "affected" more than 15 settlements there.
The Ukrainian military also claimed "successful combat operations" had "increased significantly" the losses among Russian units, particularly around the Svativskiy and Kreminskiy areas of Luhansk.
The chairman of the Dnipropetrovsk regional council, in central Ukraine, Serhiy Lysak, said that an 18-year-old man was killed and three others injured by Russian shelling of the city of Nikopol overnight.
RFE/RL cannot confirm accounts by either side in areas of the heaviest fighting.
Russian officials, meanwhile, claimed to have safely defeated an overnight attack by unmanned drones in the Moscow region that they blamed on Kyiv.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Russia's Defense Ministry said early on August 9 that air-defense forces had shot down two drones.
"There was an attempt to fly over the city by two combat drones," Sobyanin said via Telegram early on August 9. "Both shot down by air defense. One in the Domodedovo area, the second in the Minsk highway area." He said emergency responders were at the scenes.
Later, the Russian Defense Ministry said forces had "thwarted" what it called "an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by unmanned vehicles," adding "there were no casualties or damage."
Kyiv, which has avoided confirming possible attacks on Russian territory since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began 17 months ago, did not initially respond to the accusation.