Five people, including a teenage girl, were injured Monday during a Russian missile attack on Kyiv, where falling debris also damaged at least two buildings in central districts.
Russia has escalated aerial attacks on Kyiv in recent days, targeting key infrastructure in the wake of fatal Ukrainian bombardments on Russian border regions.
AFP journalists heard several explosions and air raid sirens in Kyiv at around 10:30 am (0830 GMT) as officials urged residents to take shelter.
“Five people were injured in the Pechersky district. Three were treated at the scene. Two were hospitalised,” Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on social media.
One of those being treated in the hospital is a 16-year-old girl, he said in an earlier post.
Images distributed by emergency services showed municipal workers in hard helmets sifting through piles of rubble next to a large crater.
The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Sergiy Popko, said Russia had attacked with two ballistic missiles launched from the annexed Crimean peninsula, in what was the third aerial assault on the capital in five days.
He said both missiles had been downed but falling debris crashed down in several central districts, and damaged two buildings.
“Again this morning Russia is attacking Ukraine with hypersonic missiles. Loud explosions in Kyiv,” the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, wrote on social media.
“Ukraine needs our assistance now. There is not a moment to lose,” she added, a reference to a $60 billion military aid package held up in the US Congress.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba posted footage purporting to show school children running to a shelter at the time of the attack.
“This is a reminder that Ukraine urgently requires more air defence, particularly Patriot systems and missiles capable of repelling any Russian attack,” he wrote.
Ukraine has been appealing to its allies for months for greater air defence capabilities as Russia steps up attacks across Ukraine.
The Kyiv attack came after almost a dozen people were wounded in a Russian drone strike on southern Ukraine overnight, and a fire broke out at a major Russian power plant following a Ukrainian drone attack.