Sawt Falasteen - Russian strikes kill at least 16 across Ukraine

AFP journalists heard loud bangs echoing over the capital during the night and saw huge plumes of black smoke rising over central Kyiv at dawn.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 659 drones in the attack and 44 missiles, over the last 24 hours, adding that its air defence units downed 636 drones and 31 missiles.

Officials across the country said 16 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in the attacks in several regions.

"Another night has proven that Russia does not deserve any easing of global policy or lifting of sanctions," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media after the attack.

"Russia is betting on war," added the president, who has been touring European countries to drum up support.

EU council chief Antonio Costa accused Russia of choosing to "deliberately terrorise civilians", decrying the overnight killing as a "horrendous attack against civilian targets".

Moscow has fired hundreds of drones on its neighbour almost nightly since the beginning of the war, with Kyiv regularly carrying out strikes within Russia in response to its attacks.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, had killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions, marking the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.

- Peace talks in limbo -

The Kremlin's latest deadly attack comes after the end of a 32-hour Orthodox Easter truce marred by accusations of mass violations, according to both countries.

Peace talks spearheaded by the United States to end the war now grinding through its fifth year have been derailed by US and Israeli war with Iran.

Kyiv has also stepped up its long-range drone and missile attacks on Russia, and Ukrainian strikes overnight killed two people, including a child, in southern Russia, officials said.

A 14-year-old girl and a young woman were killed in the Black Sea city of Tuapse when a volley of drones hit housing and a music school, local governor Veniamin Kondratyev said. Five other people were wounded.

The Russian army said its forces intercepted 207 drones across the western and southern regions, in total.

The attacks in Ukraine's Odesa that killed nine people also targeted port infrastructure in the wider region that are vital for Ukrainian grain exports. The strikes on the Ukrainian Black Sea port city also wounded 23 people.

In Kyiv, at least four people were killed, including a 12-year-old boy, the city's mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

AFP journalists at the scene of the attacks in Kyiv saw a damaged ambulance and the body of one victim covered with a blanket on the street.

Rescuers pulled a child from the rubble of a residential building that collapsed in Kyiv's Podilsky district, where a drone "literally flew into an 18-storey apartment block", Klitschko said.

Three people were killed and 34 were wounded in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, Oleksandr Ganzha, head of the regional administration said on Telegram.

In a separate attack, the head of the eastern Kharkiv region said a Russian drone strike had killed a woman in the town of Merefa.

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O.Mousa--SF-PST