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Editor's Note: This is a developing story and is being updated.
Russia launched its latest overnight drone strike on Ukraine, targeting the capital in an attack that lasted over five hours, city officials reported on Nov. 3. Several waves of explosions were heard in Kyiv throughout the night.
Debris from intercepted drones struck multiple city districts. In the city’s Holosiivskyi and Desnianskyi districts, drone debris fell in open areas causing multiple fires. The fires were quickly localized, according to Kyiv City Military administration. Authorities reported no casualties or significant damage.
Air defense downed all the drones targeting Kyiv, according to Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration.
From 5:30 p.m. local time on Nov. 2 to the morning of Nov. 3, Russian forces launched at Ukraine a Kh-59/69 guided air missile and 96 attack drones of Shahed and other types, according to the Air Force.
The missile and 66 drones were downed by Ukrainian forces, 27 drones disappeared from radars, and another drone flew to Belarus, the Air Force said on Telegram. The aerial targets were reportedly downed over Kyiv, Sumy, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Odesa, and Khmelnytskyi oblasts.
In Kyiv, the debris damaged road surfaces, a lighting pole, and electrical utility wires in the Shevchenkivskyi district, Popko said. The blast wave reportedly shattered windows on the first and second floors of a dormitory and an adjacent university building, while also damaged several windows from the first to the ninth floors of a nearby office building.
Later the same day, the Institute of International Relations of the Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, Ukraine's largest national higher education institution, reported on Facebook that one of the institute's educational buildings and a dormitory were damaged by drone debris.
Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian media outlet, wrote that a building of the Institute of Journalism of the same university was also damaged by debris, citing their correspondent on the scene.
The Nov. 3 attack is part of an ongoing series of drone strikes by Russian forces on Ukraine's capital, targeting both civilian and military infrastructure.
A night before, a Russian drone strike on Kyiv caused a fire in a 16-story residential building and an office building, leaving an 82-year-old woman with shrapnel injuries to the head. The air raid alert in Ukraine’s capital lasted more than 5 hours, with explosions reported in Kyiv and surrounding areas.
Dmytro Basmat
