By Olena Harmash and Yurii Kovalenko
KYIV, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Russia pounded Ukraine's capital Kyiv with ballistic missiles on Saturday, killing at least nine people and wounding 28 others, including four children, Ukrainian officials said.
More than a dozen explosions reverberated through the city during several waves of attacks, according to Reuters witnesses.
"A hell of a night in Kyiv," Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.
"Failing to achieve its goals on the battlefield, Russia is
intensifying its air attacks and terror against civilians. Ukraine urgently needs additional air and missile defence systems and interceptors."
In the fifth year of the war, fighting is raging along more than 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) of front line although Russian advances have slowed by more than half so far this year, military analysts said.
At the same time, Russia has stepped up its attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, while Ukraine is chronically short of air defences capable of downing ballistic missiles, which travel at several times the speed of sound.
Russia denies targeting civilians in the war launched by its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
SECOND MAJOR ATTACK ON KYIV THIS WEEK
This is the second major attack on Kyiv this week after strikes on Thursday killed nine people, including six members of one family in a village near Kryvyi Rih, and a suspected Russian cruise missile landed in Poland.
Damage was recorded in seven districts across Kyiv, a city of about 3 million people, the Prosecutor's General Office said after Saturday's attacks.
Fires broke out across the city, and power outages were reported in some areas.
Prosecutors said seven people were killed in the Darnytskyi district on the left bank of the Dnipro river and two more people died in the Solomyanskyi district on the right bank of the city.
They added that 28 people were injured, including four children who suffered multiple shrapnel wounds and lacerations.
"I looked at my phone, it was 1:30 (22:30 GMT) and sirens (blared), I was lying dressed in my bed, I got up immediately. And at once explosions started - boom, boom," said Nadiia Komarova, a 68-year-old concierge at an apartment building in Kyiv.
"Our ceilings have started to crumble. My window here is smashed, and everything has fallen inside," she told Reuters.
Reuters television footage showed police and rescuers working on the site. Two rescuers put a body in a black sack in a car. Firefighters were extinguishing fires and charred cars stood near an apartment building.
"It is the battle for the skies that will define the trajectory of this war," Sybiha said. "The stronger the air shield over Ukraine, the closer peace becomes."
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Olena Harmash; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Tom Hogue, Kirsten Donovan)
