One person was killed in Russian drone attacks on a port district in Ukraine’s southwestern Odesa region while Ukrainian air defence successfully shot down a barrage of Russian missiles fired at targets in the capital Kyiv, officials said.

The night-time attacks on Odesa’s Izmail district lasted three hours, regional Governor Oleg Kiper said on the Telegram messaging app early on Wednesday.

“Unfortunately, one person died,” said Kiper, adding that it was an agricultural worker who had been seriously injured and died in hospital.

“Destruction and fires were recorded in several settlements,” he added, saying that port and agricultural infrastructure had been damaged, including administrative buildings.

The Danube river port of Izmail, which borders NATO member Romania, has become a main export route for Ukrainian agricultural produce since Russia’s withdrawal from a United Nations-brokered grain deal in July.

Ukraine’s Danube ports have become targets of sustained Russian attack in recent weeks.

Kyiv also came under Russian missile attack early on Wednesday but there were no initial reports of casualties or damage, authorities said.

Russian aircraft fired cruise missiles at Kyiv while other missiles were also focused on hitting targets in the capital, Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv City military administration, wrote on Telegram.

“According to data at the moment, there are no victims or destruction in Kyiv,” Popko said.

“Another missile attack by the enemy on a peaceful city with the aim of killing the civilian population and destroying the infrastructure,” he said.

The exact scale of the attack on Kyiv was not immediately known.

Witnesses in the city heard several blasts, which sounded like air defence systems being deployed at approximately 05:50am local time (02:50 GMT), the Reuters news agency reported.

Ukraine’s Air Force said aerial defence systems had destroyed 23 out of the 33 air weapons that Russia had launched against the country. They included 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones, seven cruise missiles and one Iskander ballistic missile.

The Russian defence ministry also said on Wednesday that its air defence systems destroyed a Ukraine-launched drone just before midnight on Tuesday over the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine.

Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of the Bryansk region, said on Telegram that there was no destruction or casualties.

Source: Aljazeera