A drone attack by Russia overnight plunged the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil into darkness, a regional military official reported Tuesday, just a week after Moscow’s strikes disrupted power across the city and its surrounding areas.
“Energy workers and rescuers are eliminating the consequences of the attack. Stock up on water, charge your phones,” Serhiy Nadal, the head of the regional defence headquarters in Ternopil, said on his Telegram messaging channel.
“A residential building was damaged,” Viacheslav Negoda, the head of the military administration of Ternopil region, said on his Telegram messaging channel. “Unfortunately, there are casualties: one person has died, there are seriously wounded.”
The full scale of the attack on Ternopil, a major city in Ukraine’s west, was not immediately clear. Air raid alerts over the Ternopil region, of which the city of Ternopil is the administrative centre, lasted for about 2-1/2 hours, starting at around 2330 GMT on Monday.
One person was killed and several were wounded in Russia‘s drone attack on Ternopil earlier on Monday.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia about the attack. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war, which Moscow launched with a full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022.
The city of Ternopil and its surrounding region were under air raid alerts for a couple of hours starting soon after midnight on Monday, according to data provided by Ukraine’s air force.
A week ago, much of the Ternopil region lost power in Russia’s largest ever drone attack on Ukraine.
Ternopil, some 220 km (135 miles) east of NATO-member Poland, and the surrounding region had a population of more than 1 million before the February 2022 Russian invasion, which drove many Ukrainians west.
(With inputs from Reuters)
