Star Metro - Russian drone barrage kills eight in east Ukraine

Moscow has pummelled Ukrainian cities with dozens of drones or missiles almost daily since it invaded in early 2022.

Images distributed by the emergency services showed a gaping hole in the side of the building and rescue workers digging through debris for survivors.

"This is a terrible tragedy, a terrible Russian crime. It is very important that the world does not pause in putting pressure on Russia for this terror," President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.

Ukrainian prosecutors said the barrage killed eight people, including three couples -- six men and women between the ages of 61 and 74.

Another elderly man and a woman, 37, were also killed.

Her eight-year-old daughter was among 12 wounded in the attack, the Sumy prosecutor's office said.

Sumy lies just over the border from Russia in northeastern Ukraine and has been regularly targeted by Russia. Around 255,000 people lived there before the war.

"(Russian President Vladimir) Putin claims to be ready for negotiations, but this is what he actually does. Only strength works with liars," Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said on social media.

The Ukrainian air force said Moscow had attacked with 81 drones, including the Iranian-designed Shahed type.

Ukraine's air defence units downed 37 of the drones in various regions, including in Sumy and near the capital Kyiv.

In the southern Odesa region on the Black Sea, officials said Russian drones targeted the port town of Izmail, one of several important Ukrainian export hubs.

Zelensky's chief of staff Andriy Yermak on Thursday accused Russia of launching Shahed drones charged with shrapnel "to increase the number of civilian casualties".

Separate Russian attacks killed one person and wounded 12 more, including two children, in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin said it annexed in late 2022.

T. MacDonald--SMC