Ukraine war: Civilians killed in missile strikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv

Four people have been killed and dozens of people wounded in Russian missile attacks targeting the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and second biggest city Kharkiv, according to officials.

Residential buildings were hit early on Tuesday in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, leaving three people killed and another 42 injured.

They included two women of 40 and 56.

The city mayor said part of a block of flats was destroyed and rescue workers were combing the rubble for survivors.

In Kyiv, several other people were hurt when a block of flats caught fire and another was damaged. One woman was reported killed, but authorities later said her death wasn’t confirmed. Most of the casualties were in Kyiv’s central Solomianskyi and western Sviatoshynskyi districts.

The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford said the air raid in Kyiv went on for more than two and a half hours, the longest since 2 January.

Ukraine’s air force said it had destroyed 21 of 41 missiles launched by Russia overnight.

Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said an undetonated missile warhead was found in a flat in the west of the city and residents in the apartment block were told to evacuate.

At least one person was killed in the industrial city of Pavlohrad in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Reflecting Ukrainian concerns that its demands for weapons are not being met by Western allies, the head of the presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, published a video of the damage in Kharkiv and said: “Kharkiv. We are not just a ‘fortress’. We need weapons!”

Ukrainian forces have in the past week targeted Russian energy infrastructure, including unprecedented attacks on an oil terminal in its second city St Petersburg.

Energy company Novatek has had to halt some of its operations after a fire at its Ust-Luga Baltic Sea export complex.