KYIV (Reuters) -Russia struck grain terminals in air strikes in southern Ukraine and killed at least one person in a missile attack in the north on Friday, Ukrainian officials said.
Russia has struck southern cities and ports nightly this week since quitting a U.N.-brokered deal allowing safe shipments of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea.
A woman’s body was pulled out of the rubble of a cultural building after a missile strike in the northern region of Chernihiv, near the border with Russia, regional governor Viacheslav Chaus said.
A photograph posted online showed the building had lost its top storey and a lower one had been severely damaged.
Two people were hurt in an earlier missile strike on an agricultural enterprise in the southern region of Odesa that destroyed 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley, regional governor Oleh Kiper said.
Russia used Kalibr cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea at low altitude to bypass air defence systems, Kiper said.
Photographs from the scene showed a fire burning among crumpled metal buildings that appeared to be storehouses, and a badly damaged fire-fighting vehicle.
Kiper said Moscow had also fired seven missiles at an “important infrastructure object” during the day in the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi district of the region which he did not identify, and that the extent of the damage was being verified.
Moscow says it has been carrying out “retaliatory strikes” this week after withdrawing from the Black Sea grain export deal and accusing Ukraine of being behind blasts on Monday on a bridge that is used to transport Russian military supplies.
Russia, which began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, has also continued shelling in eastern and southern areas this week and heavy fighting has continued in some areas.
The governor of the southern region of Zaporizhzhia said shelling had killed four people in the previous 24 hours, and the general prosecutor’s office said a married couple in their fifties were killed on Friday in shelling of the city of Kostiantynivka in the eastern region of Donetsk.
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka; Editing by Timothy Heritage)
