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<\/div>\nFive children were in hospital, including three boys who were in a critical condition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Ukraine: <\/b><\/p>\n
Ukrainian rescuers outside the city of Dnipro on Sunday recovered the body of a two-year-old girl from the rubble left by a Russian strike on a residential area.<\/p>\n
On the other side of the border, Russian authorities asked villagers living in a heavily shelled district on the Ukraine border to leave their homes after deadly strikes prompted thousands to flee.<\/p>\n
The Russian attack that hit the Pidhorodnenska suburb of the central city of Dnipro on Saturday came as Moscow has this week intensified aerial assaults on Ukraine.<\/p>\n
“At night, a girl’s body was retrieved from under the rubble of a house in the Pidhorodnenska community” outside Dnipro, Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk region, said on Sunday. “She just turned two.”<\/p>\n
Officials said the strike killed the toddler, born in 2021, and wounded at least 22 others.<\/p>\n
Five children were in hospital, including three boys who were in a critical condition, they added.<\/p>\n
Kyiv also said a Russian strike had hit an airfield in central Ukraine overnight, which Moscow appeared to confirm on Sunday, saying it had struck military air bases with long-range weapons overnight.<\/p>\n
The attacks came at the end of a week that saw Russia launch a series of air assaults on Kyiv, including rare day-time strikes.<\/p>\n
The conflict, which has dragged on for more than 15 months, has escalated this week with increased attacks on both sides of the border.<\/p>\n
Kyiv has for months said it is preparing for a major counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces.<\/p>\n
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the country is “ready” but pleaded for more Western weapons to counter Russia’s air superiority.<\/p>\n
In a video published Sunday, the Ukrainian army appeared to call on soldiers to stay silent and said there will be no announcement on the start of the long-awaited offensive.<\/p>\n
“Plans love silence,” Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Malyar said on Telegram.<\/p>\n
“The start will not be announced,” she added, accompanying the video showing soldiers placing fingers on their mouths.<\/p>\n
‘Bombed and bombed’<\/strong><\/p>\n Russian authorities asked residents of villages of a heavily shelled district in the Belgorod region that borders Ukraine to leave their homes.<\/p>\n Intensified Ukrainian shelling of the Shebekino district this week has left several people dead and forced thousands to leave the area for Belgorod city.<\/p>\n Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Sunday some 4,000 people left border villages and were placed in temporary housing.<\/p>\n He urged residents of several villages on the border to leave their homes.<\/p>\n “I ask that in the villages of, first of all, the Shebekino district that has been shelled, to listen to the position of authorities and leave — temporarily leave — their homes,” Gladkov said on Telegram.<\/p>\n He said the goal was “to safeguard what is most important: your life and the lives of your close ones”.<\/p>\n He said it was another “not calm night” in the district with “a lot of damage”.<\/p>\n Tatiana Kozheleva, a 64-year-old pensioner who left Shebekino and was receiving humanitarian aid in Belgorod, told AFP there was almost “nothing left” of the small city.<\/p>\n “Our city Shebekino was bombed and bombed,” she said.<\/p>\n “Our house was also hit by a shell,” she said, adding that her balcony was damaged.<\/p>\n “We almost did not get out from under the shelling.”<\/p>\n On Saturday, Ukrainian shelling killed two women in Russian border villages.<\/p>\n Gladkov said the authorities would take minors from border villages and the children of mobilised soldiers fighting in Ukraine to youth camps.<\/p>\n (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n