KYIV -- Russia fired hundreds of drones and missiles at Kyiv, Dnipro, and other Ukrainian cities, killing at least 19 people across the country in one of the largest bombardments in months.
Emergency workers struggled on April 16 to douse fires and locate survivors in high-rise apartment buildings in the Ukrainian capital.
As many as 45 people had been injured in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, while another official said the wounded toll was at least 58.
In a post to Telegram, Klitschko said the Kyiv death toll, which stood at four, included a 12-year-old child.
In the central city of Dnipro, at least four people were killed and 27 injured in a missile strike, Governor Oleksandr Hanzha said on Telegram. He added that one of the five injured people who were in critical condition died in the hospital later that day.
The Black Sea port city of Odesa was badly hit, officials said, with nine people reported killed, and more than a dozen wounded. Another person was killed by Russian shelling in Zaporizhzhya.
Russia's near-nightly barrages of Ukraine have tapered off in recent weeks after a punishing cold winter where Russia hit heating and power plants and millions of Ukrainians were left without heat or electricity.
In the April 16 overnight barrage, Russia fired more than 650 drones at Ukrainian targets, along with nearly four dozen cruise and ballistic missiles, Ukraine's military reported.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has stepped up the intensity of its drone strikes on Russian targets. It recently hit two major oil terminals on the Baltic Sea in an apparent effort to choke off Russian exports.
The Russian town of Tuapse -- located on the Black Sea coast midway between Novorossiisk and Sochi -- was hit by Ukrainian drones, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said in a post to Telegram. At least two children were killed.
The Russian Defense Ministry later said on its Telegram account on April 16 that the country's air defense systems had intercepted and destroyed 207 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones overnight over the Belgorod, Smolensk, Kursk, Bryansk, Oryol, and Krasnodar regions, as well as Crimea and over the Black and Azov seas.
US-backed talks aimed at resolving the all-out Russian war -- now in its fifth year -- have ground to a halt, as Washington shifts its attention to the war in Iran. Russia has shown no indication of softening its hardline demands on Ukrainian territory and security guarantees, which Kyiv has said are unacceptable.
