Russian missile attack on Dnipro, Ukraine kills 2-year-old girl, injures 22

A 2-year-old girl was killed and 22 people were injured — including five children — when a Russian missile struck a residential area of Ukraine’s central city of Dnipro overnight into Sunday, local officials said.

Serhiy Lysak, the governor of the Dnipro region, said the sudden attack destroyed and damaged several buildings and left 17 people in the hospital.

“Overnight, the body of a girl who had just turned two was pulled from under the rubble of a house,” Lysak said on the Telegram app Sunday.

The young girl, named Lisa, had recently turned two. Her body was found underneath the remnants of a house demolished in the strike.”

Iskander short-range cruise missiles were used during the strike, Lysak said.

The missile fell between two two-story apartment buildings in the Pidhorodnenska community, wrecking a number of homes and cars in the area.

Videos shared online showed rescue teams working to dig through the remnants.

Moscow has not commented on the alleged attack, though Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that its military forces target civilians.

“Once again, Russia proves it is a terrorist state,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Saturday after the first reports of the explosions.

Seventeen children have died in the Dnipropetrovsk region since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to Mykola Lukashuk, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region council.

“No words can soothe the pain of parents who have lost the most precious thing in their lives,” Lukashuk said.

Since the start of the war, at least 485 children in Ukraine have been killed and nearly 1,500 have been injured, Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General said Sunday on Telegram.

Not long after the strike in Dnipro, Russia launched another wave of overnight air strikes on Ukraine, though Kyiv’s forces were able to take down more than half of the air targets, the country’s air force said Sunday.

Four of the six cruise missiles and three of the five Iranian-made Shahed drones sent over by Russia were taken down, the air force said on Telegram.

Kyiv’s city military administration earlier said all Russia-launched targets approaching the capital had been blocked.

Russia has launched attacks at Ukraine’s capital since May, ahead of a highly anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive that leaders in Kyiv hope will reclaim territory.

Zelensky on Saturday said he is confident the counter-offensive will end in victory over Russia despite the recent barrage of missile and drone strikes.

“We strongly believe that we will succeed,” Zelensky said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

“I don’t know how long it will take. To be honest, it can go a variety of ways, completely different. But we are going to do it and we are ready.”

With Post wires.