Boy killed, 23 wounded in Russian strike on Ukraine's Kharkiv region

KHARKIV - A strike by Russian forces hit residential buildings in the eastern region of Kharkiv, killing a 10-year-old boy and injuring nearly two dozen others, Ukrainian officials said Friday.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city that lies in a region bordering Russia, has been under routine shelling since Moscow's forces invaded in February last year.

"Another targeted attack by Russia on civilians. The body of a 10-year-old child was found under the ruins," Igor Klymenko said in a statement.

The regional governor Oleg Synyegubov said 23 people, including an 11-month-old child, had been injured. Search operations are ongoing.

The police service and Synyegubov said the city had been hit twice by Russian cruise missiles.

"One of the missiles hit a road; windows were broken in neighbouring houses. The second missile hit a three-storey residential building, causing a fire," Synyegubov said.

Rescue workers were extinguishing a fire next to a charred vehicle and missile fragments lay at the bottom of a deep crater in the centre of the city, an AFP journalist at the scene said.

The attack comes less than 24 hours after one of the deadliest strikes in months left more than 50 people dead in a village in the same region.

Swathes of the Kharkiv region were captured by Russian forces in the early days of their invasion but Ukrainian forces have clawed back much of it since a lightning offensive late last year. - AFP