Russian attack on Ukrainian medical centre leaves nine dead

Two consecutive Russian attacks on a medical centre in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy have killed at least nine people.

The first strike killed one person and Russia attacked again while patients and staff were evacuating, Ukraine’s interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.

Officials in Sumy said Shahed drones were used in the attack.

At least 21 other people were wounded, the head of the Sumy City Military administration, Oleksii Drozdenko, said.

Sumy lies about 20 miles from Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have been deployed since August 6 in a bid to divert the Kremlin’s military focus away from the front line in Ukraine.

In the north-eastern Kharkiv region, a Russian air strike on the village of Slatyne on Saturday killed three people and injured three more, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

Mr Syniehubov also said one person was killed in a drone attack in the nearby village of Kozacha Lopan.

Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 69 of 73 Russian drones launched overnight as well as two of the four missiles. City authorities in Kyiv said around 15 drones had been shot down over the Ukrainian capital and its outskirts.

In Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home city, local officials said that a man’s body was found under the rubble of an administrative building hit by a Russian missile on Friday, bringing the death toll from that attack to four.

In Russia, the Defence Ministry said that air defences overnight had shot down four Ukrainian drones over the Belgorod region and one over the Kursk region, both areas bordering Ukraine.

One person was killed in Ukrainian shelling of the Russian border city of Shebekino on Saturday, Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Two other people were wounded.