Russian Missiles Hit Kyiv Wounding Five People, Ukraine Says

Russian missiles struck a residential building and a kindergarten in central Kyiv early on Sunday, wounding five people, officials said, the first such attack on the Ukrainian capital in weeks.

Up to four explosions rang out in central Kyiv. A fire broke out in a nine-storey residential building that was partially damaged in the attack in the central Shevchenkivskiy district, the emergency services said.

"They (rescuers) have pulled out a seven-year-old girl. She is alive. Now they're trying to rescue her mother," Kyiv's mayor Vitali Klitschko said

"There are people under the rubble," Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app. He added that several people had already been hospitalised.

Ukraine's police chief Ihor Klymenko said on national television that five people had been wounded.

"The Russians hit Kyiv again. Missiles damaged an apartment building and a kindergarten," said Andriy Yermak, head of the president's administration.

There was no immediate comment from Russia, which denies targeting civilians and says it targets military infrastructure.

Air raid sirens regularly disrupt life in Kyiv, but there have been no major strikes on the city since June 5 when a rail car repair facility was hit on the outskirts and a late April shelling when a Radio Liberty producer was killed in a strike that hit the building she lived in.

The Shevchenkivskiy historic district is home to a cluster of universities, restaurants and art galleries.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, but abandoned an early advance on Kyiv in the face of fierce resistance bolstered by Western arms.

Since then Moscow and its proxies have focused on the south and Donbas, an eastern territory made up of Luhansk and its neighbour Donetsk, deploying overwhelming artillery in some of the heaviest ground fighting in Europe since World War Two [L4N2YD00S].

(Writing Lidia Kelly and Tom Balmforth; Editing by Michael Perry and David Clarke)