Residents in three Ukrainian cities woke up to the sound of airstrikes Friday for the first time in the 16 days since Russia’s invasion of the country.
Airfields were the targets in the western Ukrainian cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk, according to reports. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the strikes in Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk to Russian media outlets, calling them “high-precision, long-range attack[s].”
Lutsk is approximately 50 miles east of Ukraine’s border with Poland. The attack on its airfield left two Ukrainian servicemen dead and six people wounded, according to the head of the Volyn region, Yuriy Pohulyayko.
Footage of today’s airstrike on #Lutsk pic.twitter.com/m2kRHTieYT
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 11, 2022
In Ivano-Frankivsk, the mayor, Ruslan Martsinkiv, said residents were ordered to hide in shelters after an air raid alert. There are no reports yet of injuries or deaths.
In southeastern Ukraine, a residential part of Dnipro was reportedly hit by Russian airstrikes. Reports indicate the airstrikes hit near a kindergarten, an apartment building, and a shoe factory. Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian member of Parliament, said that two people were killed in the Dnipro strikes.
#Dnipro ? first air strikes in 16 days. For unexplainable reasons it stayed quiet and we ? it would be like that. But no. Kindergarten, residential block, shoe factory gone. 2 people killed #CivilianCasualties #StopPutinNOW pic.twitter.com/JCvJtxVzeZ
— Lesia Vasylenko (@lesiavasylenko) March 11, 2022
The Pentagon says it has counted roughly 710 missile launches throughout Ukraine since the start of the war, nearly all of them in the eastern part of the country. On Wednesday, Russian rockets hit a hospital in Mariupol, reportedly killing three people and injuring 17.
Russian troops have also targeted Ukrainian nuclear power plants in Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia and an experimental nuclear reactor at the Institute of Physics and Technology in Kharkiv.
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The Russian military has also been accused of violating ceasefires and attacking humanitarian corridors.
In its latest estimates, the United Nations says that 516 civilians have been killed in the war and 908 have been wounded. Over 2 million people have fled Ukraine as a result of the war, according to the U.N.
