By Yurii Kovalenko
KYIV (Reuters) - Russia pounded Kyiv with missiles and drones overnight, killing at least eight people, wounding more than 70, and smashing buildings in the biggest attack on the Ukrainian capital this year.
The attack set off fires, and six children were among the wounded, with some people still trapped under rubble, the officials said.
"There has been destruction. The search is continuing for people under rubble," the State Emergency Service wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X that the "brutal strikes" showed that Russia, not Ukraine, was the obstacle to peace. There was no immediate comment by Russia on the overnight attack.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said eight people had been confirmed killed in the capital, although officials had earlier said nine were killed.
The most serious incident was in the Sviatoshynskyi district west of the city centre, where the rescuers continued to clear the rubble from two buildings, Klitschko said.
Pictures posted on Telegram showed rescue teams working with floodlights, moving cautiously through piles of rubble and clambering up ladders extended along the facades of buildings. Police were calling from apartment to apartment to determine whether residents were safe.
The attack came at a critical moment in Russia's war in Ukraine, which began with Moscow's full-scale invasion in 2022, with both Kyiv and Moscow under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to show progress towards a peace deal.
Trump and his administration have threatened to walk away from efforts to broker a ceasefire if no headway is made, leaving European nations looking for ways to support Kyiv.
Talks in London on Wednesday aimed at achieving a deal made "significant progress" towards reaching a "common position on the next steps", according to a joint statement from Britain, France, and Germany. But the talks were downgraded after a last-minute decision by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio not to attend.
Trump appeared to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a lack of progress after Zelenskiy said he would not recognise Russia's occupation of the Crimea peninsula as part of a peace deal.
MOBILE PHONES RING BENEATH RUBBLE
Rescue teams were operating at 13 sites in Kyiv with climbing specialists and sniffer dogs, the emergency services said. Forty fires had broken out.
"Mobile telephones are heard ringing beneath rubble. The search will continue until it becomes clear that they have got everyone," it said.
Fires had broken out in garages, administrative buildings, and falling metal fragments had struck vehicles.
An air raid alert was in effect in the capital for six hours.
"There was the air raid siren, we did not even have time to dress to go out of the apartment. One blast came after the other, all windows were blown out, doors, walls, my husband and son were thrown to the other side," Kyiv resident Viktoria Bakal said, describing the attack.
Russia launched 145 drones and 70 missiles, including 11 ballistic missiles, in the overnight attack, Ukraine's air force said on Telegram. Air force units shot down 112 targets.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said that apart from Kyiv and the surrounding region, seven other regions were under "mass" attack.
Kharkiv, Ukraine's second biggest city, endured overnight waves of Russian missiles and drones, Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram.
Terekhov said the city in northeast Ukraine was attacked 14 times with drones and 10 times with missiles. Multi-storey residential buildings, a city polyclinic, a school building, private yards, industrial enterprises, and a hotel complex were damaged, and one person was taken to the hospital, he said.
There was also damage in the Zhytomyr region, west of Kyiv, where emergency services said Russian forces launched a repeat strike on rescue teams attending a fire, injuring one worker.
Ukrainian state railway Ukrzaliznytsia said that railway infrastructure had come under attack and two railway workers were hurt.
In Kyiv and Kharkiv regions, the shelling damaged technical track, administrative and technical buildings, but trains were operating normally, it said.
In the industrial city of Pavlohrad, which lies in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, 14 multi-storey buildings were damaged, mostly their windows and balconies, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram, adding that no one was hurt in the attack.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Anna Pruchnicka; Editing by Chris Reese, Leslie Adler, Shri Navaratnam, Michael Perry and Timothy Heritage)
