Russian drone strike injures four in Kharkiv, including young boy

A Russian drone struck a residential apartment block in Kharkiv's Osnovianskyi district late on Tuesday, injuring four people, including a four-year-old boy, Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov and regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

Terekhov said on Telegram that the strike hit at around 22:40 local time and that people were initially trapped inside the building. In a later update, he confirmed the number of injured had risen to four: two women aged 32 and 65, a 56-year-old man and the four-year-old boy. Three of them were taken to hospital for treatment, regional authorities said.

Ukraine's State Emergency Service put the toll at five injured in a separate update reported by Ukrainska Pravda on Wednesday morning, a figure that does not match the four confirmed by the mayor and the regional governor, pointing to a discrepancy between the two official accounts of the same strike.

An Italian outlet, TGCom24, carried a headline referring to a death in the attack, including a child, but this has not been confirmed by Kharkiv's mayor or regional governor, who both reported the four-year-old boy among those injured, not killed.

The strike set off a fire covering about 2,500 square metres, burning a two-storey industrial building, outbuildings, a two-storey apartment block and a single-storey house, the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration said. A private home, other apartment buildings, garages and vehicles were also damaged, and emergency crews worked at the scene into the night.

The attack came a day after a Russian strike on Kharkiv's Novobavarskyi district killed two people and injured four on Monday, also damaging apartment buildings, private homes and vehicles, Terekhov said.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, has faced repeated Russian drone and missile strikes on residential districts throughout the war, with this week's two attacks hitting different parts of the city within 24 hours, officials said.